PRIMARY SOURCES

ON COPYRIGHT

(1450-1900)

Louis d'Héricourt's memorandum, Paris (1725-1726)

Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France: Mss. Fr. 22072 n° 62

Citation:
Louis d'Héricourt's memorandum, Paris (1725-1726), Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), eds L. Bently & M. Kretschmer, www.copyrighthistory.org

Back | Record | Images | Commentaries: [1]
Record-ID: f_1725b

Permanent link: https://copyrighthistory.org/cam/tools/request/showRecord.php?id=record_f_1725b

Full title:
Memorandum by Louis d'Héricourt, addressed to M. the Keeper of the Seals

Full title original language:
Mémoire de Louis d'Héricourt à Monseigneur le Garde des Sceaux

Abstract:
In the 1720s, the lawyer Louis d' Héricourt put himself at the disposal of the Parisian booksellers, who felt threatened by the increasingly sharp protests of their counterparts from the provinces. The latter disputed indeed, as in England, monopolies still preserved by Louis XIV and the policy of Colbert regarding the 1686 or 1701 regulations, and confirmed in 1723 by the Code of the Book Trade. The memorandum presented by Louis d' Héricourt at this occasion to the Keeper of the Seals Armenonville, constitutes the first defence of the exclusive rights of the Parisian corporation under a clear legal qualification of literary property right based upon the work of the author himself. In essence an argument based on Lockean ideas, the recognition of such a property had as an inevitable consequence on the traditional perception of the privileges of the book trade and the royal sovereignty in the discretion of their granting.

1 Commentary:
commentary_f_1725b

Bibliography:
N/A

Related documents in this database:
N/A

Author: Louis d'Héricourt (1687-1752)

Publisher: Imprimerie Jacques Vincent

Year: 1725-1726

Location: Paris

Language: French

Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France: Mss. Fr. 22072 n° 62

Persons referred to:
Charles IX
D'Héricourt, Louis
Henri II
Louis XII
Louis XIII

Places referred to:
Moulins
Paris

Cases referred to:
N/A

Institutions referred to:
Keeper of the Seals ('Garde des Sceaux')
Parisian Guild of Booksellers and Printers
University of Paris (Sorbonne)

Legislation:
Code de la Librairie 1723
Decrees of King's Council 1626, 1627
French royal edict 1563
French royal edict on censorship 1547

Keywords:
authors' remuneration
book trade
censorship, pre-publication
contract
defamation
duration
guild regulation
guilds
immoral works
incentives
inheritability
labour theory
licensing, Approbation
manuscript
natural rights
patronage
perpetual protection
printing, history of
privileges
privileges, French
privileges, printing
property analogies
property theory
property theory, authors' property
property theory, publishers' property
public domain
public good
transferability
utility

Responsible editor: Frédéric Rideau


Copyright History resource developed in partnership with:

Our Partners

Copyright statement

You may copy and distribute the translations and commentaries in this resource, or parts of such translations and commentaries, in any medium, for non-commercial purposes as long as the authorship of the commentaries and translations is acknowledged, and you indicate the source as Bently & Kretschmer (eds), Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900) (www.copyrighthistory.org).

With the exception of commentaries that are available under a CC-BY licence (compliant with UKRI policy) you may not publish individual documents or parts of the database for any commercial purposes, including charging a fee for providing access to these documents via a network. This licence does not affect your statutory rights of fair dealing.

Although the original documents in this database are in the public domain, we are unable to grant you the right to reproduce or duplicate some of these documents in so far as the images or scans are protected by copyright or we have only been able to reproduce them here by giving contractual undertakings. For the status of any particular images, please consult the information relating to copyright in the bibliographic records.

Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900) is co-published by Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge, 10 West Road, Cambridge CB3 9DZ, UK and CREATe, School of Law, University of Glasgow, 10 The Square, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK