Page "Statute of Anne" Paragraph 25

When the copyrights granted to works published before the Statute began to expire in 1731, the Stationers ' Company and their publishers again began to fight to preserve the status quo.

Their first port of call was Parliament, where they lobbied for new legislation to extend the length of copyright, and when this failed, they turned to the courts.

Their principal argument was that copyright had not been created by the Statute of Anne ; it existed beforehand, in the common law, and was perpetual.

As such, even though the Statute provided for a limited term, all works remained in copyright under the common law regardless of when statutory copyright expired.

Starting in 1743, this began a thirty-year campaign known as the " Battle of the Booksellers ".

They first tried going to the Court of Chancery and applying for injunctions prohibiting other publishers from printing their works, and this was initially successful.

A series of legal setbacks over the next few years, however, left the law ambiguous.