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Adolphe Braun 
International Copyright of Photographs - Judgement 
1888, 21 September 
  
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LL/34812 
  
In the section "Talk in the Studio" in "The Photographic News", Vol.XXXII, No.1568, September 21, 1888, p.599.
 
Mb. A. E. Whitehouse, of the Hyde Park Gallery, St. George's Place, Knightabridge, attended to an adjourned summons at Westminster Police Court yesterday, charging him with pirating and multiplying for sale the registered copyright photographs of Messrs. Adolphe Braun and Co., of Paris. Mr. Mann appeared for the prosecution, and Mr. R. Cunningham Glen for the defence.
 
The summonses were taken out under the Copyright Act of 1862, and the contention of Mr. Mann was that this statute incorporated the provisions of an Order in Council made ten years before, and the old Copyright Act of 1844, by which reciprocal copyright privilege was given to English and French authors, and producers of works of art.
 
A great deal of argument of a technical character took place as to the rights conferred on foreigners, and the intention and construction of the old statutes on International Copyright, and Mr. Mann urged that the case for the prosecution was strengthened by the recent Copyright Act of 1886, and an Order in Council of Nov. 26, 1887, which carried into effect the agreement of the Convention of Berne, giving an author of a literary or artistic work first produced in one of the foreign countries of the Copyright Union, the same right of copyright as if the work had been first produced in the United Kingdom.
 
The evidence as to fact established the sale by the defendant of alleged pirated photographs of well-known salon pictures. There was, moreover, an admission by the defendant that the printing of the pictures had been delayed by wet weather, and the sworn opinion of experts that the photographs did not emanate from Messrs. Braun's studios, and that they were reproductions from reduced negatives.
 
Mr. Glen urged that no Act or Order in Council anterior to 1862 could affect the issue, as the statute passed in that year first alluded to photographs. Also that the 1887 Order in Council did not come into operation until January of this year, long after the date of registration of Messrs. Braun's photographs. The defence was also set up that the defendant was only a manager of the Hyde Park Gallery business, appointed by a trustee for creditors.
 
Mr. D'Eyncourt at considerable length reviewed the facts, and gave his reasons for coming to a decision adverse to the defendant. For the offence disclosed in one summons he convicted, and ordered defendant to forfeit £10 to the complainant and five guineas costs.
 
Mr. Glen asked that there might be a stay of execution, so that the defendant and his advisers could consider whether his Worship should be asked to state a case.
 
Mr. D'Eyncourt: Yes. It is a sort of civil proceeding, compensation to be given to the prosecutor. There are a good many holes of escape, and my judgment may be reviewed.
 
It was stated that the negatives of the photographs in question had been broken. Daily News, Sept. 14. 
 

 
  
 
  
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