NEW BILLS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5142, 15 September 1877, Page 5 (Supplement)

NEW BILLS.

FINE ARTS COrVEIGHr BILL. Mr. Travers has introduced a Bill which, if it becomes law, as we presume it will, is calculated to be a very useful measure. The preamble states that the authors of paintings, drawings, engravings, useful and ornamental designs, sculptures, and photographs have no copyright of their works in New Zealand, and that it is expedient that the law should in that respect be amended. The Bill provides that authors (being British subjects aud resident in the colony) of any of the above-mentioned works shall have a copyright in such “ work of art ’.’ for life. All copyright under the Act is to be deemed personal estate. Every copyright or subsequent assignment of it is to be registered according to a form provided in a schedule appended to the Bill. Persona infringing copyright under the Act arc liable to penalties. It is provided that “no person shall fraudulently sign or otherwise affix, or fraudulently cause to be signed or otherwise affixed, to or upon any work of art any initials or monogram. No person shall fraudulently sell, publish, exhibit, dispose of, or offer for sale, exhibition, or distribution, any work of art having thereon the name, initials, or monogram of a person who did not execute or make such work. No person shall fraudulently utter, dispose of, or put off, or cause to be uttered or disposed of, auy copy or colorable imitation of any work of art, whether there shall be subsisting copyright therein or not, as having been made or executed by the author or maker of the original work from which such copy or imitations shall have been taken. Where the author or maker of any work of art, mado either before or after the passing of this Act, shall have sold or otherwise parted with the possession of such work, if any alteration shall afterwards bo made therein by any other person by addition or otherwise, no person shall be at liberty during the life of the author or maker of such work, without his consent, to make or knowingly to sell or publish or offer for sale such work or any copies of such work so altered or of any part thereof, as or for the unaltered work of such author or maker.

And every offender against the provisions of this section shall upon conviction forfeit to the person aggrieved a sum not exceeding ten pounds, or not exceeding double the full price, it any, at which all such copies, engravings, imitations, or altered works, shall. have been sold or offered for sale; aud all such copies, engravings, imitations, or altered works shall be forfeited to the person or the assigns or legal representatives of the person whose name, initials, or monogram shall be so fraudulently signed or affixed thereto, or to which such fraudulent or altered work shall bo so falsely ascribed ; Provided always that the penalties imposed by this section shall not be incurred unless the person whose, name, initials, or mon gram shall bo so fraudulently signed or affixed, or to whom such spurious or altered work shall be so fraudulently or falsely ascribed, shall have been living at or within seven years next before the time when the offence may have been committed. Injunctions may be granted for infringement of copyright. Printed copies of “ Works of Act” are to be forfeited. Nothing in the Act is to affect any remedy which any person aggreived may be entitled to cither at law or in equity.