''Hinton v Donaldson'' (1773, 5 Brn 508) was a case by which the

Court of Session The Court of Session is the supreme civil court of Scotland and constitutes part of the College of Justice; the supreme criminal court of Scotland is the High Court of Justiciary. The Court of Session sits in Parliament House in Edinburgh ...

rejected the claim that

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, education ...

Scots law Scots law () is the legal system of Scotland. It is a hybrid or mixed legal system containing civil law and common law elements, that traces its roots to a number of different historical sources. Together with English law and Northern Ireland l ...

existed beyond the limited term which had been introduced under the

Statute of Anne The Statute of Anne, also known as the Copyright Act 1710 (cited either as 8 Ann. c. 21 or as 8 Ann. c. 19), was an act of the Parliament of Great Britain passed in 1710, which was the first statute to provide for copyright regulated by the g ...

. The case had been brought by a London bookseller, John Hinton, concerning the reprinting of a work by

Thomas Stackhouse Thomas Stackhouse (1677–1752) was an English theologian and controversialist. Life The son of John Stackhouse (d. 1734), who became rector of Boldon in County Durham, and uncle of John Stackhouse, he was born at Witton-le-Wear where his fath ...

on which Hinton claimed rights. The case was brought against the booksellers Alexander Donaldson, John Wood and James Meurose.

James Boswell James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck (; 29 October 1740 (New Style, N.S.) – 19 May 1795), was a Scottish biographer, diarist, and lawyer, born in Edinburgh. He is best known for his biography of his friend and older contemporary the Englis ...

, who was a friend of Donaldson, led for the defenders. The judges found (with

Lord Monboddo James Burnett, Lord Monboddo (baptised 25 October 1714; died 26 May 1799) was a Scottish judge, scholar of linguistic evolution, philosopher and deist. He is most famous today as a founder of modern comparative historical linguistics. In 1767 ...

dissenting) that an author had no property rights in a book, but only the temporary rights which had been granted under the Statute. The case influenced the subsequent

House of Lords The House of Lords, also known as the House of Peers, is the Bicameralism, upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Membership is by Life peer, appointment, Hereditary peer, heredity or Lords Spiritual, official function. Like the ...

ruling in

Donaldson v Beckett ''Donaldson v Becket'' (1774) 2 Brown's Parl. Cases (2d ed.) 129, 1 Eng. Rep. 837; 4 Burr. 2408, 98 Eng. Rep. 257; 17 Cobbett's Parl. Hist. 953 is the ruling by the British House of Lords that held that copyright in published works was not perpet ...

(1774).

References

1773 in Scotland Court of Session cases 1773 in case law Copyright law in Europe Scots civil law {{Scotland-law-stub