This is an appeal from the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Rhode Island.
The bill was filed by the appellant in the court below, to restrain the defendant from printing and publishing a map of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, in violation of the complainant's copy-right.
The facts are briefly these: The complainant, on the 23d of April, 1831, took out the copy-right of a map, the title of which is as follows: 'A Topographical Map of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, surveyed trigonometrically and in detail, by James Stephens, topographer and civil engineer, Newport, R. I., 1831, the right whereof he claims as author, in conformity with the act of Congress, entitled an act to amend the several acts respecting copy rights,' and since then has been engaged in printing, publishing, and vending the said maps, by virtue of the copy-right thus obtained. In March, 1846, a judgment was recovered against him, in the Common Pleas of Bristol county, Massachusetts, for $194.23, upon which an execution was issued, and the copperplate engraving of the map in question seized, and sold, and bid off by the defendant for the sum of $245, he being the highest bidder. Having thus become entitled to the property in the engraving, he claimed the right to print and publish the maps, and in pursuance of this supposed right, he had been engaged in printing, publishing and vending the same.
On the hearing upon the bill, answer, and proofs, the court below differed in opinion, as to the effect of the sale of the copperplate engraving of the map; but agreed that no injunction could issue without a repayment of the purchase-money, which was refused by the complainant; whereupon the court dismissed the bill with costs.
The single question in the case is, whether or not the property acquired by the defendant in the copperplate, at the sheriff's sale, carried with it, as an incident, the right to print and publish the map engraved upon its face.
Upon this question the court below devided in opinion, but finally agreed in dismissing the bill.
The appellee has not followed the case into this court, and we have not, therefore, been favored with the grounds and reasons relied on for sustaining the decree; nor have we been furnished with the reasons of the court for the same. The ground upon which the decision was ultimately placed, namely, the refusal of the complainant to refund that purchase-money, is certainly not satisfactory; for if the copy-right of the map, or any right to print or publish the same, passed with the purchase of the plate, as incidental, as there is nothing in the facts of the case to invalidate the sale, the title became complete in the purchaser, and could not be rightfully interfered with. But if otherwise, then there was no ground for imposing the repayment of the purchase-money, as a condition to the relief prayed for; the injunction should have been awarded, and the defendant directed to account.
But from the consideration we have given to the case, we are satisfied that the property acquired by the sale in the engraved plate, and the copy-right of the map secured to the author under the act of Congress, are altogether different and independent of each other, and have no necessary connection. The copy-right is an exclusive right to the multiplication of the copies, for the benefit of the author or his assigns, disconnected from the plate, or any other physical existence. It is an incorporeal right to print and publish the map, or, as said by Lord Mansfield in Millar v. Taylor (4 Burr. 2396,) 'a property in notion, and has no corporeal tangible substance.'