342 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



etc., Guide," and Mackey's " Shippers' Guide." The proprietor of the 

 " Monitor Guide " sued Mr. Mackey for violation of copyright. The 

 judge said that such guide-books are a proper subject of copyright ; 

 but that the right was not so broad and full as the plaintiff claimed ; 

 it did not forbid Mackey from collecting similar information to that 

 given in the " Monitor Guide," about post-office, railroad, express, and 

 telegraph business, or from arranging and exhibiting it in much the 

 same general ways, but only from copying material portions of the 

 " Monitor Guide." 



Recent decisions on the question whether books designed to be 

 used in a g'Mcm-mechanical way ruled account-books, bond-registers, 

 and the like should be copyrighted or patented, were narrated in an 

 article in the July number. Nothing new on that topic has transpired, 

 except that a patent has just been sustained for an inqjroved " check- 

 book." 



Does the copyright law sustain property in the mere title of a 

 book ? The tendency of thought is that the law of trade-marks affords 

 such protection as there is for a title, as distinguished from the body 

 or contents ; that the purpose of the copyright law is to secure the 

 exclusive right of publishing the substantial work, and that it protects 

 the title only as being a part of the work. But it can not be said that 

 this has been sharply decided. When the directory for London was 

 established, which was about seventy years ago, the necessary infor- 

 mation was gathered or furnished by post-office clerks ; hence the book 

 was called, naturally enough, the "Post-Office Directory." In later 

 years the post-office aid was discontinued ; the proprietor of the enter- 

 prise continued, however, to issue the book annually, on information 

 gathered by his own canvassers. He adhered to the familiar title, 

 registering the successive volumes, under the copyright laws, as 

 " Post-Office Directories." At length a rival commenced a directory 

 for Bradford, which lay within one of the districts covered by one of 

 the issues of the old directory ; and this rival called his work also 

 "Post-Office Directory." lie has been sued; but both courts held 

 that he was not violating copyright ; nor, indeed, the trade-mark law. 



Miss Braddon wrote a novel to which she gave the name "Splendid 

 Misery," and sold it to the London journal called "The World," con- 

 ducted by Mr. Edmund Yates ; and " The World " began publishing 

 it as a serial story. This occurred in 1879. Before long the proprie- 

 tor of " Once a Week " entered a complaint, saying that in 1874 he 

 had purchased and published in his paper a novel by C. H. Hazlewood 

 (which had been duly copyrighted), also under the title "Splendid 

 Misery." He did not suggest that Miss Braddon's story imitated Mr. 

 Ilazlewood's ; the only question was whether he had an exclusive 

 right to the title, by virtue of the copyright law. The vice-chancellor 

 thought his claim good ; and, indeed, there is an earlier decision to 

 much the same effect. But Miss Braddon's publisher learned that, as 



