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The Printing Press and its Implications
One
way to research the impact of Intellectual Property
Rights (IPR) laws is to study an the evolution
of the protection of IPR prior to the enactment
of formal laws governing these rights.
The problem of unauthorized publications has begun
immediately after the invention of the printing
press (1453). Two different ways to handle the
problem have emerged. One involved the intervention
of some form of authority (a local government,
a prince, a king, the pope) that granted so-called
“privileges” (the right given for
some amount of money, to publish a book within
a given period of time). The other was the monopolization
of the market of books.
The first method seems
to have been implemental in countries characterized
by a strong central power (France is taken as
an illustrious example for a country with centralized
power). However, the actual effectiveness of the
privileges has to be checked, and this can be
done by :
1) Comparison between the amount of unauthorized
copies printed before the privileges have been
granted and afterwards.
2) Studying the prices charged by different privilege-granting
authorities.
The monopolization of the market of books was
a natural solution for a country without a centralized
power (Germany, for example). The big-sized firms
were integrated into guilds for the purpose of
protecting the book production from “pirated”
edition. The effectiveness of this monopolization
can be checked by two parameters:
1) Reduction in the number of firms asking for
privileges after monopolization in the middle
of the sixteenth century.
2) Reduction in the number of unauthorized copies
in monopolized markets.
A related question is the nature of the relationship
between the publishers and the authors. The common
arrangement stipulated that the author receive
a payment from the publisher in exchange for the
sole rights for the book. There were also cases
in which the author participated in costs of production
in exchange for a share in the profits. In both
cases, the author was prevented from striking
a parallel deal with another publisher. As these
arrangements emerged “spontaneously”
it seems worthwhile to study their details (e.g.,
the size of the one-time payment, or the exact
parameters of the sharing arrangements). In addition,
it is of interest to find out why no other contractual
forms have developed. A comparison between the
historical contracts between publishers and printers
to the types of contracts common today may yield
some insights into the role of formal legal protection
in these matters.
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