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 (1813) is the ruling by the United Kingdom House of Lords that held that copyright in published works was not perpetual and was instead subject to statutory limits. Scholars disagree on the reasoning behind the decision.

The spelling of the chief respondent in the case, Thomas Becket, sometimes appears as Beckett. For those looking to choose one spelling over the other, it would be more correct to use Becket. First, Becket overwhelmingly spelled his surname with one “t” not two “tt.” Second, many of the original, contemporaneous records in the case also spelled his surname Becket. Those records include the original proceedings of the dispute in the Court of Chancery. Additionally, the manuscript records of the appeal in the House of Lords, including the manuscript minutes and manuscript journal of the House of Lords, caption the case using the spelling "Becket," though sometimes in the text of the proceedings they use the spelling "Beckett". The most widely cited reports of the case, those prepared by James Burrow in 1776 and Josiah Brown (1st edition) in 1783, also spelled his surname Becket. The “Beckett” variation seems to have gained ground from a decision made in 1803 by T.E. Tomlins, the editor of the second edition of Brown’s report of the case, to change the spelling to “Beckett” in the caption and then to a decision made by the clerk of the journals in the House of Lords, when the House printed its manuscript journal in around 1806, to do the same.

The first modern-like copyright statute was the Statute of Anne, 8 Anne c. 19 (1710), in which Parliament granted a fourteen-year term for a copyright, extendable once for another 14 years if the author was still alive at the expiration of the first term. Parliament also provided a special grandfather clause allowing those works already published before the statute to enjoy twenty-one years of protection. When the twenty-one years were up, the booksellers—for copyrights in published works were usually held and exploited by publishers and booksellers, not authors—asked for an extension. Parliament declined to grant it.

Thwarted by Parliament, the booksellers turned to the courts for relief. They attempted to secure a ruling that there was a natural or customary right to ownership of the copyright under the common law. The booksellers arranged a collusive lawsuit, Tonson v Collins, but the courts threw it out. A second lawsuit was later brought, Millar v Taylor 4 Burr. 2303, 98 Eng. Rep. 201 (K.B. 1769), concerning infringement of the copyright on James Thomson's poem "The Seasons" by Robert Taylor, and the booksellers won a favourable 3-1 judgment. (Lord Mansfield, the chief judge on the case, had previously been counsel to the copyright-holding booksellers in various suits filed in the Court of Chancery in the 1730s. Justice Yates, the dissenting judge in Millar v. Taylor, had himself previously been counsel to the challengers of common-law copyright in Tonson v. Collins.)

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