Scottish Court of Session Decisions

Subject_1 DECISIONS of the LORDS OF COUNCIL AND SESSION, reported by ALEXANDER TAIT, CLERK OF SESSION, one of the reporters for the faculty.
Subject_2 LITERARY PROPERTY.

Taylor and Skinner
v.
Wilsons

Date: 21 December 1776

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Taylor and Skinner had published a volume of maps of the roads through Scotland, according to the directions of the statute 8th Queen Anne, c. 13, for securing to themselves the exclusive property thereof for fourteen years ; to which they had prefixed an abstract or index, specifying the distances between place and place on these roads, as measured by them. In a small pocket volume, they had also published, separately, an abstract of this book, under the title of An Abstract of Taylor and Skinner's Survey of the Roads of Scotland, showing, &c. And this abstract they had entered in Stationers' Hall, in terms of the Act of the 8th of Q. Anne, chaper 19. Robert and Richard Wilsons, having, in December 1776, published at Edinburgh an Almanack for the year 1777, under the title of the Town and Country Almanack ; Taylor and Skinner observed three pages of this compilation, as they alleged, taken from their abstract foresaid, being a table of distances of the different places in Scotland from each other; and this they considered as piracy, and as a transgression of the two Acts of Parliament already mentioned. And they applied to Lord Kennet, Ordinary, for a suspension and interdict,—which his Lordship granted. But having afterwards, upon advising answers, refused the bill, and recalled the interdict, they applied to the Court. The Lords, 19th December 1776, ordered the petition to be answered; and meantime granted an interdict. Answers were given in on the 20th December, and on the 21st the petition and answers were advised. The case was attended with difficulty. Messrs Skinner and Taylor, in their bill of suspension to Lord Kennet, had applied for a suspension of the whole Almanack ; not only of the part alleged to be stolen from them, but of the whole, and for an interdict against the whole. But, in their application to the Court, they restricted their demand to that part of the compilation taken from them, and for an interdict accordingly. And in these terms the Lords remitted to the Ordinary to pass the bill, and they renewed the interdict, to continue until the suspension was discussed.

The interlocutor was:—

“ Ordain the petition to be seen and answered, the answers to be given in to-morrow ; and, in the meantime, they prohibit and discharge the within-mentioned Robert and Richard Wilsons, and all others, from publishing, selling, or vending that part of the compilation complained of, taken from The Traveller's Pocket Book, published by the petitioners, under the penalty of L.500 sterling ; this interdict to continue until this petition shall be advised.”