In the early days of book history, many of the books being printed were religious texts such as the Bible or the Mainz Psalter, which have no clear author.  So, rather than distinguish these texts by an author, they were distinguished by their printing house.  Fust and Schoffer, who worked alongside Gutenberg, distinguished the Mainz Psalter, their set of commonly sung church psalms, with a printer’s device, or “a logo representing the book’s house of origin” (Howard 34).  After Fust and Schoffer, Howard notes that many other printing houses followed suit.  This tradition may be traced back to the development of watermarks by printing houses in the earlier days of printing.  Howard notes that, over time, many printing houses developed watermarks to be printed on the paper created in that particular printing house.  This served to distinguish the work of each printing house from one another.  This seems to be, according to Howard, one of the first forms of ownership in book printing.

Had printing houses not felt the need to distinguish their works from one another, would publishing houses today feel the need to do the same?  Would copyright and ownership laws be any different?  These are the questions I aim to answer in my first paper of the portfolio.