Hoffmann, --- "Closing dinner speech at Lincoln's Inn, 17 June 2009" [2010] ELECD 529; 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 Title: Closing dinner speech at Lincoln's Inn, 17 June 2009

Author(s): Hoffmann,

Number of pages: 4

Extract:

Closing dinner speech at Lincoln's Inn,
17 June 2009
Lord Hoffmann*

It is a great honour to address this Congress of the Association Littéraire
et Artistique which has such a distinguished record of achievements in
international copyright, starting with its foundation under the Presidency
of no other literary giant than Victor Hugo in 1878, and playing an
important role in that remarkable example of international cooperation
achievement less than 10 years later, the Berne Convention.
But tonight we look back 300 years to 1709, to a very different world,
in the reign of Louis Quatorze in France and Queen Anne in England.
It was certainly not a world of international cooperation: later this year,
on September 11, will be the 300th anniversary of the horrific battle of
Malplaquet, between the armies of Louis Quatorze and the allied armies
led by the Duke of Marlborough; the bloodiest battle of the eighteenth
century, in which the Duke lost over 20,000 men. And yet it was a period of
great elegance in which literature and the arts flourished in both England
and France. Alexander Pope, the greatest English poet of the eighteenth
century, had his first poems published by the enterprising publisher Joseph
Tonson just 300 years ago last month; at the age of 21 he became instantly
famous. The book trade was flourishing. That was the background to the
Copyright Act introduced into Parliament in 1709.
The background to the Act is fascinating and I have greatly profited
from ...