THE COPYRIGHT OF A MAP OR CHART 



By William Alexander Miller, 

 Author of "Copyright Protection for Photographs" 



~\T7"HEN our forefathers were assembled in the second session of the First 

 » » Congress on the last day of May, 1790, and decided to pass a copy- 

 You think how good a life right law, the first article that they mentioned to be 

 you will lead, and you map protected was a "map." Then in that act followed 

 out great purposes.-/** Mar- the words "chart, book, or books." 

 vet, Dream Life. _ . . ^ . r . . 



-By giving maps the preference, first mention m 



the law, now seems but to emphasize the fact of the greatest need of the country 



at that time in such productions. There was a dearth of maps, and prior to the 



Undoubtedly, Miletus was passage of the statute mentioned positively no encour- 



the birthplace of cartography, agement to draftsmen and cartographers. The science 

 — Von Ranke. c , . , , , . , ,. , 



ot chartology was almost unknown and but little prac- 

 ticed in America previous to the advent of the copyright law. What meager 

 accomplishments there were in those lines were generally performed by foreigners. 

 Every ship that comes to O ur country was at sea, without a chart. There had 

 America got its chart from been much plotting against the British, but scarcely 

 Columbus.— tfiifmo*. none in the making of maps . 



The law of 1790 was the first of our copyright acts, and secured protection 



to authors and proprietors for their productions for a period of fourteen years, 



with an extension for fourteen more. Thus the longest 

 Language has been called a .,, . c ■ ■,. . , . ,, , 



™„.. t *v. j possible term ot a copyright was twentv-eight years (a 



map of the science and man- F r ° & J 



ners of the people who speak term copied from the provisions of the old English 

 it.— .VaA- Midler. law). Our law-makers have since very wisely extended 



the life of a copyright, so that now the original is 

 granted for a period of twenty-eight years and with provisions for a renewal for 

 fourteen years additional. 



It is among the Egyptians that we find the earliest recorded 

 examples of cartographic representation. Apollonius of Rhodes 

 (b. 230 B. C. ) reports in his Argonautica that the Egyptians of 

 Colchis, a colony dating from the time of Rameses II, had pre- 

 served as heirlooms certain wooden tablets on which land and 

 sea, roads and highways, were accurately indicated. — Encyclo- 

 pedia Britannica. 



BENEFICENT EFFECT OF THE LAW 



The results expected to be attained by the framers of our law for the encour- 

 agement of map-makers have been far beyond any of 

 Thus in his cheek the map ,- . , , ,. . ,. ... ., 



. , c , , their reasonable anticipations, until at the present 



of davs outworn. — i>/ialces- r r 



p eare ' time the laiited States of America is leading the world 



in the productions of this wonderful art, one so useful 

 to mankind. The quality of our product is of the very finest. 



