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Bently, Lionel --- "Introduction to Part I: The History of Copyright" [2010] ELECD 496; in Bently, Lionel; Suthersanen, Uma; Torremans, Paul (eds), "Global Copyright" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010)

Book Title: Global Copyright

Editor(s): Bently, Lionel; Suthersanen, Uma; Torremans, Paul

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848447660

Section: Chapter 1

Section Title: Introduction to Part I: The History of Copyright

Author(s): Bently, Lionel

Number of pages: 7

Extract:

1. Introduction to Part I: the history of
copyright
Lionel Bently*

The 2009 ALAI Conference was held in London in recognition of 300
years of the Statute of Anne.1 That Act is traditionally claimed to be the
world's first copyright statute,2 and has thus become viewed as the origin
of a system of national laws that today exist in virtually all countries of the
world. But, while there is some truth in such a claim, it is also important
that it be treated with caution, because it is apt to mislead ­ in at least three
ways.


1 THE WORLD'S `FIRST' COPYRIGHT ACT

First, the statement might imply that the Act represented the world's first
system of regulation of the reproduction of published books. But this
is not true at all. As Ronan Deazley and Willem Grosheide describe,3
many countries had equivalent systems of Guild regulation and royal
printing privileges long before 1710, with many of the print privileges
schemes developed in the wake of the practices of Venice and Rome.4



* Prof Lionel Bently, Herchel Smith Professor of Intellectual Property Law,
Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge
1 An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by Vesting the Copies of Printed

Books in the Authors or Purchasers of such Copies, During the Times therein
mentioned, 1710, 8 Anne, c.19.
2 Harry Ransom, The First Copyright Statute: An Essay on An Act for the

Encouragement of Learning, 1710 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1956); ...