''Copyright in Historical Perspective'' is an influential work of

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educatio ...

scholarship by

Lyman Ray Patterson Lyman Ray Patterson (18 February 1929 – 5 November 2003) was an American law professor and an influential copyright scholar and historian. Biography Patterson was born in Macon, Georgia. He graduated from Mercer University, and obtained a ...

. The book traces the history of Anglo-Saxon copyright from the outgoing 15th century to the late 19th century. Starting with

William Caxton William Caxton ( – ) was an English merchant, diplomat and writer. He is thought to be the first person to introduce a printing press into England, in 1476, and as a printer to be the first English retailer of printed books. His parentage a ...

's introduction of the printing press to England, Patterson documents the regulation of publishing in England and the United States. He identifies

censorship Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governments ...

as a driving force in early regulation and provides a detailed account of its impact on private copyright of the publisher's guild, the

Stationers' Company The Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers (until 1937 the Worshipful Company of Stationers), usually known as the Stationers' Company, is one of the livery companies of the City of London. The Stationers' Company was formed in ...

. He describes the system of

printing patent The printing patent or printing privilege was a precursor of modern copyright. It was an exclusive right to print a work or a class of works. The earliest recorded printing privilege dates from 1469, giving John of Speyer a five-year monopoly on a ...

s – letters patent based on the

Royal Prerogative The royal prerogative is a body of customary authority, privilege and immunity, recognized in common law and, sometimes, in civil law jurisdictions possessing a monarchy, as belonging to the sovereign and which have become widely vested in th ...

that co-existed with the Stationer's copyright and remained unaffected by the Statute of Anne. Based on Patterson's dissertation, the book was first published in 1968. As of 2010 it is still in print. Kathy Bowrey ranks the books as one of two major contributions made by lawyers to the history of copyright: While she further notes that later authors writing on publisher and author perspectives on copyright failed to acknowledge the contributions made by Kaplan and Patterson, the book has still been widely cited in the academic literature. Then future

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

Justice Stephen Breyer, for instance, relied on Patterson in "

The Uneasy Case for Copyright "The Uneasy Case for Copyright: A Study of Copyright in Books, Photocopies, and Computer Programs" was an article in the '' Harvard Law Review'' by future United States Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer in 1970, while he was still a legal academ ...

", a law review article written when Breyer was a practicing legal academic.

References

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Pamela Samuelson Pamela Samuelson is the Richard M. Sherman '74 Distinguished Professor of Law and Information Management at the University of California, Berkeley with a joint appointment in the UC Berkeley School of Information and Boalt Hall, the School of Law ...

"Copyright and Freedom of Expression in Historical Perspective"
''Journal of Intellectual Property Law'', v.10, n.2 (Spring 2003). ; Notes Law books 1968 non-fiction books Copyright law literature History of copyright law Books about legal history Economics of intellectual property {{US-law-book-stub