British Works - Law Dictionary Search Results
Home Dictionary Name: british worksBritish works
British works, means works of which the author was a qualifying person at the material time within the meaning of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 (UK), Halsbury's Laws of England, Vol. 9(2), 4th Edn., Para 446, p. 308....
Copyright
Copyright, an incorporeal right, being the exclusive privilege of printing, reprinting, selling, and publishing is own original work which the statute law first gave to an author in 1709, by 8 Anne, c. 19, for the term of fourteen years. Whether the right exited at Common Law is a long-vexed and still undetermined question. See Jeffries v. Boosey, (1854) 4 HLC 815. There is no copyright in an illegal or immoral publication, Southey v. Sherwood, (1817) 2 Mer 435; Stockdale v. Onwhyn, (1826) 5 B&C 173.The law of copyright now depends mainly on the (English) Copyright Act,1911 (1 & 2 Geo. 5, c. 46) (July 1, 1912), and 'no person shall be entitled to copyright or any similar right in any literary dramatic, musical, or artistic work, whether published or unpublished, otherwise than under and in accordance with the provisions of this Act, or of any other statutory enactment for the time being in force' (s. 31).By sub-s. 2 of s. 1 of this Act 'copyright' is thus defined:--For the purposes of ...
Wireless telegraphy
Wireless telegraphy, defined in the Wireless Telegraphy Acts, 1904 (4 Edw. 7, c. 24), s. 7, and 1925 (15 & 16 Geo.5, c. 67), s. 1, as meaning 'any system of communication by telegraph as defined in the Telegraph Acts, 1863 to 1904, without the aid of any wire connecting the points from and at which the messages or other communications are sent and received,' it being also provided that nothing in the Act shall prevent any person from making or using electrical apparatus for actuating machinery or for any purpose other than the transmission, including the reception as well as the sending, of messages. The Act of 1924 prohibits the establishment of any wireless telegraph station, or the establishment or working of any apparatus for wireless telegraphy, in any place or onboard any British ship, except under and in accordance with a licence granted in that behalf by the Postmaster-General. Search-warrants may be issued by order of the Postmaster-General, the Admiralty, Army Council, Air Co...
Marriage
Marriage. Marriage as understood in Christendom is the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman, to the exclusion of all others, Hyde v. Hyde, 1866 LR 1 P&D 130. Where a marriage in a foreign country complies with these requirements it is immaterial that under the local law dissolution can be obtained by mutual consent or at the will of either party with merely formal conditions of official registration, and it constitutes a valid marriage according to English law, Nachimson v. Nachimson, 1930, P. 217. Previous to 1753 the validity of marriage was regulated by ecclesiastical law, not touched by any statutory nullity but modified by the Common law Courts, which sometimes interfered with the Ecclesiastical Courts, by prohibition, sometimes themselves decide on the validity of a marriage, presuming a marriage in fact as opposed to lawful marriage. A religious ceremony by an ordained clergyman was essential to a lawful marriage, at all events for dower and heirship; but if in an i...
Cabinet
Cabinet, is an inner body within the Council of Ministers which is responsible for formulating the policy of the Government. The Council of Ministers is collectively responsible to Lok Sabha. It is headed by the Prime Minister who determines which of the Ministers should be members of the cabinet. Only cabinet ministers have a right to attend its meetings. Minister of State attend its meetings only on a special invitation. The total number of ministers, including the Prime Minister, in the council of ministers should not exceed fifteen per cent of the total number of members of the House of the People, Practice and Procedure of Parliament, M.N. Kaul & S.L. Shakdher, 5th Edn., p. 133 [Arts. 75 and 75A, Constitution of India]In many commonwealth countries, cabinet is modelled on British pattern. In Canada, composition of cabinet is influenced by regional considerations. Australia follows the British practice of including only selected ministers in the cabinet, Practice and Procedure of P...
Gas
Gas. See the (English) Gasworks Clauses Act, 1847, and other Acts set out in Chitty's Statutes, tit. 'Gas.'By s. 161 of the (English) Public Health Act, 1875 (see also (English) Road Traffic Act, 1934 (24 & 25 Geo. 5, c. 50), s. 23), any urban authority may contract with any person for the supply of gas or other means of lighting their district, and provide lamps and other materials for such lighting; or where there is not any company or person authorized by Parliament to supply gas, may themselves undertake to supply gas to their district or such part of it as is not within the limits of supply of any such company or person. by s. 162, an urban authority for the purpose of supplying gas to their district may (with the sanction of the Board of Trade) buy, and the directors of any gas company (duly authorized as required by the Act) may sell and transfer their undertaking to such authority, on agreed terms.Originally gas was supplied to a prescribed illumi-nating standard. Later, when t...
Letters-patent, or letters overt
Letters-patent, or letters overt [fr. liter' patentes, Lat.], writings of the sovereign, sealed with the Great Seal of England, whereby a person or public company is enabled to do acts or enjoy privileges which he or it could not do or enjoy without such authority. They are so called because they are open with the seal affixed and ready to be shown for confirmation of the authority thereby given. Peers are sometimes created by letters-patent, and letters-patent of precedence were granted to barristers. By letters-patent aliens are made denizens, and especially new inventions are protected; hence the incorporeal chattel of patent-right.A 'patent-right' is a privilege granted by the Crown to the first inventor of any new contrivance in manufactures, that he alone shall be entitled, during a limited period, to make Articles according to his own invention--Statute of Monopolies, 21 Jac. 1, c. 3.To be the subject of a patent-right an article must be material and capable of manufacture, an i...
Negligence
Negligence, acting carelessly, a question of law or fact or of mixed fact and law, depending entirely upon the nature of a duty, which the person charged with negligence has failed to comply with or perform in the particular circumstance of each case. A very convenient classification has been formulated corresponding to the degree of negligence entailing liability measured by the degree of care undertaken or required in each case, i.e., (1) ordinary, which is the want of ordinary diligence; (2) slight, the want of great diligence; and (3) gross, the want of slight diligence. A smaller degree of negligence will render a person liable for injury to infants than in the case of adults, see Cooke v. Midland Great Western Railway, 1909 AC 229; and Glasgow Corporation v. Taylor, (1922) 1 AC 44. There is also a peculiar duty to take precaution in the case of dangerous Articles, see Dominion Natural Gas Co. v. Collins, 1909 AC 640. This case should be distinguished from the principle in Fletche...
National insurance
National insurance. The (English) National Insur-ance Act, 1911 (1 & 2 Geo. 5, c. 55), introduced by Mr. Lloyd George, established a wide system of compulsory state insurance covering both ill-health and unemployment, which is based upon premiums contributed in part by the employer, in part by the employee, and in part by the State. The Act consisted of three parts, the first dealing with National Health Insurance, the second with Unemployment Insurance, and the third contained miscellaneous provisions. This Act remained the basis of National Health Insurance, although the subject of very extensive amendment, until the National Health Insurance Act, 1924, consolidated the law. The law has been consolidated again by the (English) National Health Insurance Act, 1936 (26 Geo. 5, and 1 Edw. 8, c. 32), amends and repeals the whole of the Acts passed in 1920, 1922, 1924 and 1928. The arrangement is as follows:-Part I. Insured Persons and Contributions.Part II. Benefits.Part III. Approved Soc...
Chancellor, Lord
Chancellor, Lord, properly, 'the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain' [fr. Cancellarius, low Lat., cancelli, Lat., latticework], the highest judicial functionary in the kingdom, and superior, in point of precedency, to every temporal lord. He is appointed by the delivery of the king's Great Seal into his custody. He may not be a Roman Catholic (10 Geo. 4, c. 7, s. 12). He is a cabinet minister, a privy councillor, and prolocutor of the House of Lords by prescription (but not necessarily, though usually, a peer of the realm), and vacates his office with the ministry by which he was appointed, but is entitled to a pension. When royal commissions are issued for opening the session, for giving the royal assent to bills, or for proroguing Parliament, the Lord Chancellor is always one of the commissioners, and reads the royal speech on the occasion. To him belongs the appointment of all justices of the peace throughout the kingdom, and the appointment and removal of county court judges (se...
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