"The Administrator of General Services

shall provide for the preservation, arrangement,
repair and rehabilitation, duplication and re-
production (including microcopy publications),
description, and exhibition of records or other
documentary material transferred to him as may be
needful or appropriate, including the preparation
and publication of inventories, indexes, catalogs,
and other finding aids or guides to facilitate their
use. He may also prepare guides and other find-
ing aids to Federal records and, when approved
by the National Historical Publication Commission,
publish such historical works and collections of .
sources as gem appropriate for printing and other-
wise recording at the public expense."

Further, qualitatively speaking, among presently

provision

enjoyable benefits denied by this deed, is the one single most important congressionally asserted factor prompting it to encourage the preservation of such papers. At least when Congress revised the governing statutory which directs the National Archives to make only such use of Presidential papers as is authorized by the governing instrument the stated purpose of the two sponsoring congressional committees in thus inducing gifts of such papers was that: "Documents of this character, when they can be properly released for scholarly research, frequently constitute the most valuable of all the source materials of

Finally, as to the particular items in question here (those in which Mr. Nixon did not originally hold the common law copyright), had the decd not denied 10 many "rights" to the United States with respect to usc of the tangible

property, the National Archives, by statute could have re-produced the material without any

liability for impinging on the common law intangible property interest (common law copyright, as distinguished

from statutory copyright under the federal copyright statute) of third persons (Mr. Nixon aside) who may

still hold that intangible interest? The specifically

stated purpose of the immunizing statutory provision was to assure that "the United States and its agents would not be liable for any infringement of literary property rights that might result from the use of letters and other material (exclusive of material copyrighted or patented) after they come into the custody of the Administrator."

The cumulative impact of all the foregoing seems

to require a conclusion that, as to tangible items
with respect to which Mr. Nixon did not originally own
the common law intangible copyright interest, this
Chattel Deed did grant the United States only a "future
interest" in the "tangible" personal property.

This conclusion necessarily leads to a second question: Regarding "tangible" personal property, did the Chattel Deed have the same before-mentioned effect also as to a second group of tangible items, specifically as to those tangible items with respect to which Mr. Nixca originally also owned the intangible common law property interest (common law copyright)?

For three reasons, the first two of which are

the more persuasive, it appears as to this second group of items that the United States again should be

deemed to have received, as to the "tangible personal

property," only a "future interest" therein.

The first reason has to do with the operative
-Observe that the

language of the deed itself,

operative language, in all particulars, is common
to both groups of tangible items, i.e., to those as
to which Mr. Nixon had no intangible interest, as well
as to the tangible items as to which he originally
did hold the intangible property interest.

Thus, if as

to tangible items in which Mr. Nixon did not originally own an intangible property interest, the deed is said to have conveyed for tax purposes only a future interest in the tangible item, it is a bit difficult as a matter of construction, to argue that

the deed's common operative language effects the tangible property interest in the second group of items in a different manner.

A second consideration has to do with the deed's so-called "negative-restriction proviso," Those clauses, as to all items, go well beyond mere protection of any intangible property interest (common law copyright) he originally may have held in some items, and thereby impinge substantially on what otherwise would have beer. some of the Archies' "rights" of present enjoyment of the tangible property itself. In this conner ion, generally speaking,

the common law copyright embraces only the exclusive

right to "publish, But"publication" is a term of
art, and does not embrace every type of exposure or
present use. Thus, only by impinging on the donce's
tangible property interest, postponing present enjoy-
ment of it, can the restrictions in the Chattel Deed
be given, as they must, their full literal effect.
Just what use, absent the deed's so-called
"negative-restriction proviso," might the Archives have
made of its tangible personal property without impinging
on the intangible property interests which others may have

held?

Writers who have seriously considered the rights of

those who hold only a tangible property interest in correspondence, and have looked at the question of what that property interest

permits such persons to do, have tended to agree with the first American writer on the subject, Professor Parker

but multiply copies, and perhaps he may do this, if he does not print them." The leading modern treatise on the subject, by Nimmer, adds: "If the library merely

exhibits the letter this is probably not an infringement

of the author's right of publication.

Clearly suggesting

that a library, without infringing the common law copyright of an author, could make letters, etc., available at least to research scholars under controlled conditions precluding verbatim reproduction, is the decision of a recent case involving a biographer of Ernest Hemingway. The biographer was held not to have violated the common law copyright belonging to Hemingway's Estate in that the biographer, while using Hemingway's personal letters, did not engage in verbatim copying or verbatin reproduction of the contents. were to assert the "dubious" proposition that Mr. Nixon's intangible property interest itself, if retained, inherently included a right of access in him to use the materials to obtain at least a reproduction copy, still unaccounted for would be the adverse impact of the deed's so-called "negative restriction clause." It necessarily impacted adversely, as indicated supra, on the Archives present enjoyment of its interest in the tangible property. Less persuasive than the two reasons previously related is a third and final possible reason why the Chattel Deed might be deemed to have limited the United States to a "future interest" even in those tangible properties as to which Mr. Nixon did originally own the intangible common law copyright if Mr. Nixon had coupled with the so-called

In view of the foregoing, even if one

"initial granting clauses" a simple reservation of his