from Us or Our successors in government and if he indicates
his possession of such a privilege, as well as its length
of tenure, on the title page of the given work; he is to enjoy
this protection only for the period specified in the privilege
(the time period must be specified in any case). Anything
published by Our booksellers and printers before the
promulgation of this law, even if it does not meet these
formal requirements, is nevertheless also to come under the
protection of this privilege for five years henceforth, as
long as the place of publication and the publisher’s name
are honestly declared on the title page.
4) Foreign publishers of original works whose
authors are named or who have indicated on the title page
a printing privilege from their respective States are to
enjoy the same aforementioned protection as native publishers
against any manufacture and sale of reprints in Our lands
as long and insofar as they are able to demonstrate that
Our publishers would be entitled to the same protection
against reprinting in those respective States.
5) The violation of this law gives the author –
if he is named on the pages of the given book – and the
publisher a right to sue for all still available reprint
copies to be handed over to him on payment of no more than
the books’ price as waste paper so that he can destroy them
(which he is indeed obliged to do if he demands the surrender
of these copies) and for compensation amounting to twice
the price of the original edition for every reprint copy
that is proved to have been sold. This is to be done in
such a way that the first of the two – the author or the
publisher – to present a claim shall be heard, but that once
such compensation has been received, the reprinter is no
longer liable to pay any further damages, which means that
the other rightful complainant must address any request for
compensation to the first plaintiff and to no one else. In
addition to this, however, the reprinter is liable to a police
fine of as many Imperial thaler as there are sheets in the
original work he had reprinted.
6) Insofar as there are, accordingly, still certain
cases in which reprinting is not punishable – either because
the original work was published in a State which fosters
reprinting or because [after expiry of the privilege] the
work in question may now be republished freely by anyone –
such indemnity may, however, only be invoked by those who
by openly indicating the place of the reprint and the printing-
house used, or by any other means, have shown that the printing
they have undertaken is an honest enterprise. Those, on the
other hand, who seek to give their reprints the appearance
of printed goods from an established publishing house by
imitating the latter’s printing-types as well as arrogating
the name and place of publication indicated in the original
works, are liable not just to payment of damages as described
above, but also to a fine in accordance with the law on
forgeries – whereby this penalty must be meted so as to exceed
the above police fine by at least a third.
Everyone is to pay heed to this and take care not to
come to grief accordingly. Such is Our will. Issued in Our
city of Baden, on 8 September 1806.
By special order of the Grand Duke:
His Highness’s Privy Councillors