Publishing across borders: the Polish discussion of literary property and copyright in the era of the Berne Convention

The article deals with the Polish discussion of literary property and copyright in the second half of the 19th century. Because of the partitions, Polish publishers in that era were subject to different le- gal systems (Russian, Prussian, and Austrian) while the Polish lan- guage publishing market was divided by customs borders. On the other hand, there was a flourishing cooperation between Polish publishers based on unwritten customary publishing practices that were observed across borders. In contrast to countries with more de- veloped and concentrated publishing markets, there were no signif- icant differences in the views of Polish publishers on literary prop- erty or the duration of copyright protection. In the international debate on the protection of translations, Polish publishers, lawyers, and also writers usually opposed the full protection of translations because they saw it as a threat to the development of Polish culture, which depended on access to world literature and science.