ORAL ARGUMENT OF SIR CHARLES RUSSELL, Q. C. M. P. 293 



As I have said, the United States was not a party to this Convention; 

 but quite recently, I think in 1891, the United States passed a law 

 granting security of copyright in the United States to the authors of 

 any country which gives copyright to the productions of the citizens of 

 the United States on the same terms as it gives protection to its own 

 nationals in respect of any work printed and published first or, at least, 

 simultaneously, in the United States; and, upon an official intimation 

 from the Government of Great Britain that Great Britain in fact gives 

 copyright protection to United States citizens on the same terms as she 

 does by her law to British subjects, the President, under the authority 

 of the law of the United States, may issue a Proclamation extending 

 the benefits of th6 Act to British subjects. 



Senator Morgan. — Will you permit me to say that that Act of Con- 

 gress was based upon the fact that the Constitution of the United States 

 creates property in intellectual ijroductions and also in inventions. It 

 creates property. 



Sir Charles Russell. — That is my point. My point is, that while 

 it creates or recognizes that for its own citizens and nationals, it did 

 not recognise that property when it was the creation of British law. 



Senator Morgan. — It might have been so in practice; nevertheless, 

 the Government of the United States assumed the right in virtue of its 

 sovereignty to create property in intellectual productions and also in 

 inventions, just as if they were material substances. 



Sir Charles Russell. — I assure you, Sir, I am not concerned to 

 dispute that. I began by saying that the Copyright Act of Queen 

 Anne was, by some of our Judges, supposed to be an assertion of a 

 common law principle, which would be a recognition of property. The 

 point I am upon, the learned Senator will see, is that, while municipally 

 regarded there was property, there was no international recognition of 

 that property. 



Senator Morgan. — That depends on international considerations; 

 but the fact of property in intellectual efforts and productions, 

 1071 and property in inventions, was established by the Constitution 

 of the United States. 



Sir Charles Russell. — I do not doubt it. I have said the fact was 

 so as regards Great Britain. That is not the i)oint I am upon. The 

 point I am upon is that it was not internationally so regarded; namely, 

 that the author producing an important work in England, the result of 

 the labour of years or of a lifetime, had that work reproduced, i^irated, 

 in the United States and other countries. Do not let the learned Sen- 

 ator suppose I go into it for the purpose of recrimination, or anything 

 of that kind, for I certainly do not, I only seek to show that interna- 

 tionally the property was not regarded, and that this Convention does 

 not make international law; it is a step towards international law, but 

 it does not make it. It is simply an agreement binding upon the Pow- 

 ers who are parties to it, and carrying with it an obligation upon the 

 part of those Powers to take the necessary steps to give eifect to it. 



Now as regards inventions the United States, on the other hand, had 

 very serious ground of complaint. The United States has added 

 greatly to the wealth of the world in that fi.eld of invention especially 

 which tends to the simj^lification of processes of labour, to which 

 invention the spar had been given largely owing no doubt to the 

 absence of a dense population to supply tlie full demands for manual 

 labour. The state of tlie English law in that regard is this: Prior to 

 1883 it had been for many years the law in England that the person 

 who introduced into the United Kingdom for the lirsttime a newinven- 



