inventor. These things and others of the same kind are the fruit of the author's or inventor's thought and labour, and anyone who stole them and published them without their owner's consent would commit a sin against justice.
Among modern civilized nations these rights are protected by municipal laws and international agreements, and, inasmuch as these determine the vague and uncertain prescriptions of the natural law, they bind in conscience.
The exclusive right of printing or otherwise multiplying copies of books, etc., is called in English' law copyright. It extends not only to books, but to every volume, part, or division of a volume, pamphlet, sheet of letterpress, sheet of music, map, chart, or plan separately printed; to engravings, prints, sculpture, models, busts, paintings, drawings, photographs, designs, dramatic and musical representations.
Copyright is protected throughout, the British dominions and the principal countries of Europe, which form the Copyright Union. On certain conditions copyright is now protected in the United States of America, and foreign authors may acquire copyright within the States by complying with those conditions.
English law grants copyright for the author's natural life and for fifty years longer.
In the United States the original terms run for twenty- eight years; it may, however, be renewed for a further term of fourteen years, making forty-two years in all.
In the same way patent right, or the right of the inventor to reap the benefit of a new contrivance, is protected in England on certain conditions for fourteen years, which protection may be extended for a further period of seven or fourteen years if the inventor has not yet reaped the full benefit of his invention, and such patent is for the public benefit. The period to which patent right extends in the United States is seventeen years.
There is a controversy among theologians as to whether the natural law of itself forbids the reissue by another without the author's consent of a book which has once been published. Some deny this on the ground that by being published, apart from the prescriptions of positive law, a book 'becomes public property, and anyone who buys a copy may make what use of it he pleases. He is merely disposing of what is his own. The contrary opinion, however, seems better grounded, for the author in publishing a book makes over indeed to the buyers of it certain advantages, but there is nothing to prevent
