Vogel, Martin --- "From Privilege to Modern Copyright Law" [2010] ELECD 503; 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 8

Section Title: From Privilege to Modern Copyright Law

Author(s): Vogel, Martin

Number of pages: 6

Extract:

8. From privilege to modern copyright
law
Martin Vogel*

1 INTRODUCTION

When the Statute of Anne was enacted 300 years ago, England was on its
way to becoming a global power. Meanwhile, the Holy Roman Empire
was still wrestling with the consequences of the Thirty Years' War of
1618­1648: it had lost 30 per cent of its population and a significant pro-
portion of its economic power. The book trade alone had been hit so hard
that book production only reached pre-war levels in the middle of the
eighteenth century.
The peace treaty of Münster and Osnabrück in 1648 set the seal on a
remarkable reduction of the Emperor's power. It not only gave the sov-
ereigns of the territorial states within the Empire the right to determine
which religious denomination they adhered to, but also gave the law of
the respective territory precedence over the law of the Empire. This had
significant consequences for the book trade, since until then the printing
privileges issued by the Emperor had granted protection against reprint-
ing of books throughout the whole nation. With the peace of 1648, this
changed in that the privileges granted by the Emperor lost ground in the
face of territorial privileges.


2 THE LEIPZIG BOOK FAIR

Saxony ­ both a home to printing presses and Leipzig as a book-trade
centre ­ exploited this situation in order to put publishing in its territory
at the centre of book production in the Holy Roman Empire. Saxony
...