Gyles v Wilcox

Gyles v Wilcox
Court	Court of Chancery
Full case name	Gyles v Wilcox, Barrow, and Nutt[1]
Decided	6 March 1740
Citation(s)	(1740) 3 Atk 143; 26 ER 489
Court membership
Judge(s) sitting	Philip Yorke, 1st Earl of Hardwicke
Keywords
Fair use

Gyles v Wilcox (1740) 26 ER 489 was a decision of the Court of Chancery of England^[2] that established the doctrine of fair abridgement, which would later evolve into the concept of fair use. The case was heard and the opinion written by Philip Yorke, 1st Earl of Hardwicke, and concerned Fletcher Gyles, a bookseller who had published a copy of Matthew Hale's Pleas of the Crown. Soon after the initial publication, the publishers Wilcox and Nutt hired a writer named Barrow to abridge the book, and repackaged it as Modern Crown Law. Gyles sued for a stay on the book's publishing, claiming his rights under the Statute of Anne had been infringed.

The main issues in the case were whether or not abridgements of a work inherently constituted copyright infringement, or whether they could qualify as a separate, new work. Lord Hartwicke ruled that abridgements fell under two categories: "true abridgements" and "coloured shortenings". True abridgements presented a true effort on the part of the editor, and by this effort, constituted a new work which did not infringe upon the copyright of the original. Leaving it to literary and legal experts to decide, Hartwicke ruled that Modern Crown Law was not a true abridgement, but merely a duplication intending to circumvent the law.

The case set a legal precedent which has shaped copyright law to the present day. It established the common law doctrine of fair abridgement, which was cited in other cases, ultimately building up to the idea of fair use. The opinion also recognised the author's right to a work through the nature of the labour it took to produce it, shifting copyright away from publishing rights and towards the idea of serving the greater good by encouraging the production of new, useful works.