Document Type

Report

Publication Date

2-7-1907

Abstract

We are opposed to certain portions of the majority report submitted by the Senate Committee on Patents on Senate bill No. 6330, and reported on January 29,1907, as Senate bill No. 8190.

The original bill was introduced in the Senate and House of Representatives on May 31, 1906, being Senate bill No. 6330 and House bill No. 19853.

It was immediately referred to the Patent Committees of the Senate and House, and it was arranged that the committees should hold joint public hearings on the bill, commencing June 6, 1906. At these hearings in June a great deal of opposition to many provisions of the bill developed, the brunt of the contest being waged around that section of the bill which made devices reproducing sounds to the ear an infringement of the copyright. This was paragraph (g) of section 1, and as originally framed gave to the author or composer of the musical composition, or his assigns, for the first time the following rights, viz:
(g) To make, sell, distribute, or let for hire any device, contrivance, or appliance especially adapted in any manner whatsoever to reproduce to the ear the whole or any material part of any work published and copyrighted after this act shall have gone into effect, or by means of any such device or appliance publicly to reproduce to the ear the whole or any material part of such work.

Two separate groups of business interests strenuously opposed the provisions of this section, viz:
(1) Manufacturers of pianos and piano players operated by music rolls, and manufacturers of music rolls for use on such instruments, and
(2) Manufacturers of talking machines, etc., and manufacturers of records for use in connection with such machines.

These interests most vigorously contended that paragraph (g) as quoted above, should be eliminated because—
(1) It was unconstitutional.
(2) Because if passed it would create a monopoly.
(3) It would be extending the law of copyrights to lengths which all the countries of Europe that had legislatea on the question had declined to go.
(4) It is designed to inequitably benefit this alleged monopoly and the foreign owners of copyrights on foreign compositions, thereby granting to foreign composers or copyright owners rights which were refused them in their own countries, and rights which those countries do not grant to American composers or copyright owners.
(5) It invades the domain of the patent laws and fails to preserve that line of demarcation between copyrights and patents which has heretofore been carefully preserved.

As to the alleged monopoly, this paragraph (g) is said to have been injected into the bill by an association known as the Music Publishers’ Association. The opposition to this paragraph contended that it was introduced for the benefit of the AEolian Company, of New York, and for the purpose of giving that company a complete monopoly of thee piano-player and music-roll business.

Comments

Part R

59th Congress, 2d Session } SENATE. { Report No. 6187, Part 2. 

TO CONSOLIDATE AND REVISE THE ACTS RESPECTING COPYRIGHT. 

February 7, 1907.—Ordered to be printed.

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