ranslate a
foreign book, and each could copyright his own translation. Every copy
of a book for which such protection is desired under this law must
bear a notice stating, "Published ---- Nineteen Hundred and ----.
Privilege of copyright in the United States reserved under the Act
approved March 3, 1905, by A. B."

Only the author or his assignee (_i.e._ the proprietor) may secure
copyright in a book. An author may transfer orally all or part of his
rights before publication, but after publication it is necessary for
him to make the assignment by some form of written instrument. In
order to make it a valid assignment, the original instrument must be
sent to be recorded in the office of the Librarian of Congress within
sixty days after its execution. The fee for recording an assignment is
one dollar. After the original document has been recorded, it is
signed and sealed and returned to the sender, who should preserve it
with the certificate.

It is a common practice to have in the contract between the author and
his publisher a clause assigning to the publisher all of the author's
rights for the "full term of copyright and for any and all renewals."
The agreement, of course, includes other provisions such as for the
payment of the usual royalties, accounting, etc. Having been made
before publication such an assignment does not need to be recorded in
the Copyright Office.

The history of copyright is an extremely interesting subject, but it
cannot be properly treated in the limits of this article. It may be
mentioned, however, that the first copyright law was enacted by
Parliament during Queen Anne's reign and is known as "8 Anne, c. 9."
This statute provided that an author should have complete control of
his literary productions during a first term of fourteen years after
publication, and a renewal term of the same length, and provided
penalties against piracy. A great many questions concerning this law
arose from time to time in trials before various courts, but perhaps
the chief one of interest was that of whether the limitation of the
period during which it granted protection had destroyed the author's
rights which had existed previously. For fifty years after the passage
of the law, the decisions were that the right of ownership existed for
all time as a right in common law unaffected by the statute, but in
1774 the highest English court held that while the rights of the
author before the publication of his book