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Taylor and Skinner published, in a series of engraved maps, a survey which they had made of all the roads in Scotland; and they likewise published an abstract of this survey in a small pocket volume, under the title of “The Traveller's Pocket-book.” Wilson, publisher of the Town and Country Almanack, copied into that work several entire pages of the above abstract. Taylor and Skinner applied, by bill of suspension, for an interdict against the sale of this Almanack, as an invasion of their property, which had been entered in Stationers’ Hall; urging, That the honest fruits of their labour, in a work which had cost them years of toil and much expense, were thus carried off, by persons who had never laid out a shilling, nor exerted the smallest ingenuity on the subject. The defence was, That the Almanack contained nothing but a mere list of stages and their distances, known before the pursuers’ survey ever appeared, and in which it was ridiculous for any body to claim a property. The act was for the encouragement of learning; but there was no exertion of learning in publishing a list of roads and stages. The Court were of opinion, that this was an evident piracy on the work of the complainers, and that the practice was pessimi exempli; they therefore granted the interdict.
