Burnet v Chetwood
| Burnet v. Chetwood, also: Burnett v. Chetwood | ||||
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| Court of Chancery | ||||
| Decided on October 12, 1721 |
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| facts | ||||
| Permission to reprint a translation under the Act of Anne | ||||
| Lower courts | ||||
| - | ||||
| decision | ||||
| Granting an injunction in favor of the plaintiff | ||||
| Ratio decidendi | ||||
| occupation | ||||
| Majority opinion: Thomas Parker, 1st Earl of Macclesfield LC | ||||
| Agreeing: | ||||
| Dissent: | ||||
| Applied laws / precedents | ||||
| 8 An. c. 19th |
Burnet v Chetwood (1721) is the name of a court case before the Court of Chancery dating from 1721. It is the first case under the Act of Anne .
facts
The English theologian Thomas Burnet had published the work Archeologica Philosophica in Latin in 1692 . After his death in 1715, the publisher William Rufus Chetwood undertook an English translation of the work. The executor George Burnet, appointed to manage the estate , took action against this publication in the Court of Chancery with the aim of obtaining an injunction on the grounds that “property of the book was vested by 8 An. c. 19. "
Decision of the Court of Chancery
The Lord Chancellor Macclesfield LC, who was appointed to the decision, discussed in his decision that a translation should not be treated as a copy under the Act of Anne , insofar as "the translator has bestowed his care and pains upon it". Since the basis of the decision of the Court of Chancery was equity, it had to be taken into account that the court was also responsible for the censorship of books (“superintendency over all books”). Since the present book contains questionable views (“strange notions”), the injunction should therefore be granted.
literature
- Ronan Deazley : On the Origin of the Right to Copy: Charting the Movement of Copyright Law in Eighteenth Century Britain (1695-1775) . Hart Publishing, Oxford 2004.
- Ronan Deazley: Rethinking Copyright: History, Theory, Language . Edward Elgar, London 2006, ISBN 978-1-84542-282-0 , pp. 115 ff .
- Mark Rose : Authors and Owners . Harvard University Press, 1993, ISBN 978-0-674-05309-0 , pp. 50 ff .
- David Saunders : Copyright, Obscenity and Literary History . In: Journal of English Literary History . tape 57 , 1990, pp. 431-444 .
