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Chapter IV

About the privileges / which the sovereign princes
      customarily award with regard to books, so that these may
            not be reprinted within a certain period
                  of time.

Contents

      The privileges / which are customarily
awarded because of the reprinting of books / are
not unjust. no. 1 f.
      The reasons [for these privileges]. no. 3 ff.
      Who may award such privileges. no. 7
      Booksellers must not misuse the
Imperial privileges. no. 13
      They must not boast of having an Imperial
Privilege / if that is not actually the case. no. 16
      The privileges are to be restricted to a
specific period of time. no. 17 ff.
      Short books are not to be awarded
privileges so readily [as longer works] no. 21
      Others are not permitted to print an
extract from a privileged book. no. 22
      Enlarging a book does not
constitute a new book as such no. 23
      Decisions on the award of a major
privilege are to be taken only by
those who may grant such privileges. no. 24
      It is not permitted to rob others / by reprinting
of the profit that they had been counting on. no. 27 ff.

§.1Since booksellers, often at their great expense but to the benefit
of the scholarly community, help to put to print certain authors and books, and
given that the reward and profit which they hope to gain from these is often delayed
for many years, and that sometimes the printed books (especially nowadays,
given that we are so swamped with books and booksellers) have quite some
trouble in finding buyers, as a result of which the publishers suffer no mean losses,
it follows that they are not to be begrudged if they furnish and protect themselves
with a certain privilege, so that no other [bookseller] can have the same books
printed, and so that foreign

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booksellers cannot bring such books printed abroad into the [first publisher's]
native territory. For even though such privileges are hated and seem to
resemble a monopoly - that which is so strictly forbidden according to both
Roman and German laws (Law 6 de Monop. Ordin. Polit. of the years
1548 and 1577, entitled "Concerning monopolies") - there is in fact nothing unjust
or detrimental to the common weal about them. For, first of all,
natural equity does not allow anyone to harm another person with malicious
intent, which would certainly be the case if a bookseller who has
laid out great expenses on the publication of a book, so as to some day
in the future reap the fruits and profits of his work, were to be robbed
of this hope of his by another book printer's venture and thereby, as it so
often happens nowadays, to be plunged into unexpected poverty (Carpzov,
Jurispr. Consist. Book 2, def. 413, no. 10). Secondly,
public welfare causes - nay, spurs on booksellers, who are encouraged
accordingly by the granting of privileges, to put to print, at their expense,
the writings and works of learned persons. And since the books which are to
be published do require great expenses, it is truly not unreasonable - nay, on
the contrary, it is most just that such provisions are made on behalf of book-
sellers, so that they do not have to innocently suffer evident losses in their
affairs as a result of the greed and injustice of other people (See our Treatise
On monopolies, ch. 10, no. 86). Thirdly, privileges are not
generally granted to booksellers for perpetuity, but rather only for a specific
period of time, from which it follows how very little harm they could possibly
cause to the common weal.

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      §.3 One may ask whether (3.), in the case that a bookseller has originally
published a work at his own expense and the author of the latter should subsequently
wish to undertake a new edition of it, the bookseller would then have the right of
priority to this re-publication of the work? The answer is: If the latter offers the
author the same fee for his work, then it surely does not seem unreasonable that he
should be given preference over other booksellers, since he did bring out the first
edition of the work not without a certain risk for himself, which most certainly
deserves to be taken into account.

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Translation by: Luis A. Sundkvist (pp.40-41, 47)