This section is from the book "Popular Law Library Vol5 Sales, Personal Property, Bailments, Carriers, Patents, Copyrights", by Albert H. Putney. Also available from Amazon: Popular Law-Dictionary.
Under the products of intellectual labors are included, (1) patents; (2) copyrights; (3) letters, and (4) lectures.
(1) and (2) Patents and copyrights are treated elsewhere in this volume.6
(3) Where a letter is written and sent by one person to another, the right of property in the letter as a tangible piece of property is in the party receiving it, while the right of property in the letter as an intellectual production is in the writer. The receiver of a letter has no right to publish it, without the consent of the writer, unless such publication is necessary for the defense of the party receiving it.
4 Putnam vs. Wiley, 8 Johns, 432;
Stewart vs. Bell, 33 Miss., 154.
5 Smith on Personal Property, 341.
6 Patents, Subject 15, Copyrights, Subject 16.
(4) Lectures are a product of intellectual labor. The party who composed them has a property right in them and they cannot be published without his consent.
 
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