DECREE
OF THE KING’S COUNCIL OF STATE,
regulating the duration
of booksellers’ privileges.
Of 30 August 1777.
Extract from the Registers of the Council
of State. Having been made acquainted in Council with memoranda
from a number of booksellers, both in Paris and in the
provinces, concerning the duration of privileges and the
property in published works, His Majesty the King has
acknowledged: that the privilege in bookselling is a favour
which is founded in justice, and whose object it is, when
accorded to an author, to reward his labour, and when
accorded to a bookseller, to guarantee the reimbursement
of any advance and to indemnify him against costs incurred:
that the differing purposes of these privileges ought to be
reflected in their duration: that the author clearly has a
greater right to a more enduring favour, while the bookseller