Petri, Gunnar --- "Transition from Guild Regulation to Modern Copyright Law (Sweden)" [2010] ELECD 502; 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 7

Section Title: Transition from Guild Regulation to Modern Copyright Law (Sweden)

Author(s): Petri, Gunnar

Number of pages: 13

Extract:

7. Transition from guild regulation to
modern copyright law (Sweden)
Gunnar Petri*

1 INTRODUCTION

When should we celebrate the birthday of authors' rights? When
should we consider that the developing law of copyright starts deserv-
ing the epithet of being modern? A reasonable suggestion is that this
is the moment when the right to copy transforms itself into the right
of the author. From that moment the conditions are put in place for
further development and the flowering of the whole plethora of rights
which we now consider as a modern legal field sui generis by the name
of copyright, droit d'auteur or Urheberrecht. This delivery is also an
indispensable threshold to pass ­ as long as the right to copy remains a
privilege and not a positive right, vested in the author, the flower beds
of copyright remain barren. This transition, therefore, is the heroic and
defining moment in the history of copyright, a harbinger of events to
come. A study of the actual circumstances surrounding that landmark
event is therefore bound to give interesting clues to the understanding of
copyright law.
There are, of course, as many such birthdays as there are national legal
traditions. Some of these traditions certainly have meant more for the
success of the idea of copyright than others. Some are mainly recipients. In
all of them, the deliveries occur during a period of roughly 150 years, from
the beginning of the eighteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth.
The great histories of ...