Rose, Mark --- "The Statute of Anne and Author’s Rights: Pope v. Curll (1741)" [2010] ELECD 500; 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 5

Section Title: The Statute of Anne and Author’s Rights: Pope v. Curll (1741)

Author(s): Rose, Mark

Number of pages: 9

Extract:

5. The Statute of Anne and authors'
rights: Pope v. Curll (1741)
Mark Rose*

1 INTRODUCTION

It is commonplace to note that English copyright law is, despite its stated
emphasis on the public interest, essentially commercial in origin. After all,
the Statute of Anne, the first English copyright act, emerged in 1709 largely
as a result of the disruptions in the book trade that came about with the
end of licensing in 1695. Likewise, US copyright law, which descends from
the English statute, is also essentially commercial. The European civil law
countries, on the other hand, give priority to the author and these laws, at
least in theory, are founded on authors' rights.
What I want to do is to test or qualify the familiar contrast between
the copyright tradition that descends from the Statute of Anne and the
authors' rights traditions of the civil law countries. I propose to do so by
discussing one of the early Statute of Anne cases ­ Pope v. Curll,1 decided
in 1741 ­ in order to suggest how in this lawsuit the poet, Alexander Pope
was using the Statute of Anne to pursue personal as well as economic
interests. Furthermore, to suggest that Pope v. Curll is by no means a
unique or erratic case, I propose to leap some 250 years from the time of
the Statute of Anne to the near present and the important American case
Salinger v. Random House,2 decided in 1987. The similarities between
Pope and Salinger are ...