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Treatise on the Laws of Literary Property Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2011
CHAP. I.—OF PIRATING THE COPYRIGHT IN PRINTED BOOKS
SECT. I.—Of Original Works
It would, perhaps, be unreasonable to expect, that any full and precise definition should have been made of the extent to which a writer may lawfully quote or extract from the works of his predecessors. The courts have generally confined themselves to the decision of the mere point in litigation. The general principle, however, may be collected to be, that extracts made in a bona fide manner, are justifiable. According to some authorities, however, they must not be so extensive as to injure the sale of the original work, even though made with no intention to invade the previous author; nor must they be speciously or colorably adapted from the original into a form differing only in appearance and manner of composition.
The identity of a literary composition, says Blackstone, consists entirely in the sentiment and the language. The same conceptions, clothed in the same words, must necessarily be the same composition : and whatever method be taken of exhibiting that composition to the ear or the eye of another, by recital, by writing, or by printing, in any number of copies or at any period of time, it is always the identical work of the author which is so exhibited.
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