Gaultier's memorandum for the provincial booksellers, Lyon (1776)

Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France : Mss. Fr. 22073 n°144

Citation:
Gaultier's memorandum for the provincial booksellers, Lyon (1776), Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), eds L. Bently & M. Kretschmer, www.copyrighthistory.org

Back | Record | Images | Commentaries: [1]
Record-ID: f_1776

Permanent link: https://www.copyrighthistory.org/cam/tools/request/showRecord.php?id=record_f_1776

Full title:
Memorandum for consultation by the Booksellers and Printers from Lyon, Rouen, Toulouse, Marseille, and Nisme, concerning book trade privileges and their prolongations

Full title original language:
N/A

Abstract:
This mémoire by the lawyer Gaultier (probably Jean-François Gaultier de Biauzat, the future delegate to the Estates General), published in 1776, in the thick of the 'battle of the booksellers', is one of the most famous vindications of the provincial booksellers, in particular those of Lyon and Rouen. It provided an answer for the last time, before the legislative decisions of 30 August 1777, to the arguments of the Parisian booksellers who ever since Louis d' Héricourt had been defending a (perpetual) literary property right of the author on his work. Describing the state of the book trade and the lobbying methods of the Parisian corporation in detail, Gaultier also presented a traditional vision of book trade privileges as the only source of exclusiveness for a published work. For the provincial booksellers, the latter did not comprise, by its creation process, sufficiently specific characteristics to truly differentiate it from the invention. Consequently, privileges which guaranteed exploitation to a publisher were to be as limited as those granted to inventors.

1 Commentary:
commentary_f_1776

Bibliography:
N/A

Related documents in this database:
1690s: Memorandum on the dispute between the Parisian and the provincial booksellers
1725-1726: Louis d'Héricourt's memorandum
1777: Linguet's memorandum

Author: Jean-François Gaultier de Biauzat

Publisher: Imprimerie Alexandre-Antelme Belion

Year: 1776

Location: Lyon

Language: French

Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France : Mss. Fr. 22073 n°144

Persons referred to:
Aguesseau, Henri-François d'
Angot, Charles
Anisson, Jean
Anisson, Laurent
Aquinas, St Thomas
Arnauld, Antoine
Augustine, St
Badius, Josse
Barret, Jean-Marie
Baskerville, John
Bouchel, Laurent
Briasson, Antoine-Claude
Bérulle, M. de
Cardon, Horace
Cellot, Louis-Marie
Chénon, Pierre
Cicero, Marcus Tullius
Clement XIV
Colbert, Jean Baptiste
Couret de Villeneuve, Louis-Pierre
De La Roche, Aimé
De La Roche, Léonard
Desaint, Jean
Desaint, la veuve
Desprez, Guillaume
Didot, François
Didot, François-Ambroise
Didot, Pierre-François
Dolet, Etienne
Dorez, J. J.
Du Bray, Toussant
Du Cange, Charles Dufresne, Sieur
Duchesne, la veuve
Duplain, Benoît
Duplain, Joseph
Durand, Laurent
Estienne, Henri II
Estienne, Robert
Eve, Clovis
Foulis, Andrew
Foulis, Robert
Frederick II
Frellon, François
Frellon, Jean
Furgole, Jean Baptiste
Gaguin, Robert
Gaultier de Biauzat, Jean-François
Gonnelieu, Jérôme de
Grabit, Joseph-Sulpice
Grasset, François
Gryphe, Antoine
Gryphe, Sébastien
Henri IV
Hondius, Jodocus
Huguetan, Jean Antoine
Josse, Georges
Jullieron, Antoine
Jullieron, Guichard
Junte, Jacques
La Beaumelle, Laurent Angliviel de
Lallemant, Nicolas
Lallemant, Richard-Gontran
Lallemant, Xavier-Félix
Lamoignon, Guillaume II, seigneur de Blancmesmil et de Malesherbes
Langelier, Abel
Langelier, la veuve
Le Brun, Denis
Le Camus de Neville, François Claude Michel Benoît
Le Jay, M.
Leonard, Frédéric
Linguet, Simon Nicolas Henri
Louis XIV
Louis XVI
Malesherbes, Chrétien Guillaume de Lamoignon de
Mesenguy, François-Philippe, Abbé
Mettayer, Pierre
Muguet, François
Nicole, Pierre
Phélypeaux, Louis
Phélypeaux, Louis, Duc de La Vrillière
Posuel, Jean
Regnault, Gabriel
Rigaud, Benoist
Rigaud, Pierre
Rigaud, Simon
Rovillé, Guillaume
Sartine, Antoine de
Savary, Jacques des Bruslons
Seneca, Lucius Annaeus
St Francis of Sales
St Jerome
Terray, Joseph Marie
Tinghi, Philippe
Tissot, Simon Auguste André David
Tournes, Jean de, I
Tournes, Jean de, II
Treschel, Johannes
Varennes, Olivier de
Vascosan, Michel de
Vence, Henri-François, l'Abbé de
Voltaire, François Marie Arouet de
d'Urfé, Honoré, Marquis de Valromey and Comte de Châteauneuf

Places referred to:
Amsterdam
Athens
Avignon
Besançon
Bouillon (Belgium)
Clermont
Denmark
Dole (Franche-Comté)
England
Europe
France
Gelderland
Geneva
Genoa
Germany
Great Britain
Grenoble
Hanau
Hessen
Holland
Italy
Jersey
Lausanne
Liège
Lyon
Marseille
Nancy
Netherlands
Nîmes
Orleans
Paris
Poland
Pontarlier (Franche-Comté)
Portugal
Rome
Rouen
Russia
Scotland
Spain
Switzerland
Toulouse
Turin
Venice
Versailles
Vesoul (Franche-Comté)
Yverdon (Switzerland)

Cases referred to:
Donaldson v. Becket (1774) 4 Burr. 2408, 2 Bro. P.C. 129
Josse v. Malassis (1665)
Leonard v. Martin (1670-1673)

Institutions referred to:
Academy of Sciences (Paris)
Académie française
Chambre syndicale des libraires et imprimeurs (Paris)
Chancery of France ('Grande Chancellerie')
Comédie-Française
French Ministry of Finance
French Ministry of Justice
Keeper of the Seals ('Garde des Sceaux')
King's Council of State (France)
Parisian Guild of Booksellers and Printers
Parlement of Paris
Provostship of Paris

Legislation:
Code de la Librairie 1723
Comédie-Française regulations (1757)
Decree of the King's Council (1704), reducing the number of printing offices throughout France
Decree of the King's Council (1725), regulating the Parisian book trade
Decree of the King's Council (1739), reducing the number of printing offices in some French towns
Decree of the King's Council (1744), applying the Code de la Librairie (1726) to all of France
Dutch book trade regulations in various provinces
Edict of Moulins (1566), obliging royal privileges for all first editions
French Royal Letters Patent (1701), on the book trade
Parisian Book Trade Regulations 1618
Parisian Book Trade Regulations 1620
Parisian Book Trade Regulations 1686
Ruling of the Parlement of Paris (1657), forbidding new editions unless the work had been significantly enlarged

Keywords:
Enlightenment, the
author/publisher relations
authors' remuneration
authorship, theory of
barter trade
book trade
classics, Greek and Latin
common law copyright
customs
duration, prolongation of privileges
foreign reprints
guilds
imitation, learning by
importation
interest groups
inventions
inventors
labour theory
learning, the advancement of
lobbying
monopoly
natural rights
penalties, paid to fiscal authorities
printing, history of
privileges
privileges, French
property analogies
property theory, authors' property
property theory, publishers' property
public domain
public good
reprints
scholarly writing
scribal publication
transferability
utility

Responsible editor: Frédéric Rideau


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).

You may not publish these documents 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