Definition
Contrefacon (also spelled contrefaçon) is a term drawn from French law denoting the unauthorized printing or reproduction of a book or other protected work in which another person holds a copyright or analogous proprietary right. In its classical formulation, contrefacon encompasses both the act of printing without authority and the act of causing such printing to be done — capturing both direct infringers and those who commission or facilitate the unauthorized reproduction.
The term is the French legal equivalent of what common law jurisdictions call copyright infringement, though its historical scope was centered specifically on the book trade and the rights of authors and their assigns before modern intellectual property law expanded to cover a broader range of creative works.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Contrefacon or contrefaçon in French means "counterfeiting" or "forgery" in a broad sense, covering the unauthorized reproduction or imitation of any protected item — books, trademarks, goods, currency, or other property.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's 1913 does not include a dedicated entry for contrefacon, reflecting its status as an imported French legal term with limited English common usage at the time.
The gap matters for researchers: In ordinary modern French, contrefaçon is a wide concept covering counterfeiting of goods, trademarks, and currency — much broader than its narrow legal-dictionary definition as a book-copyright offense. Historical English legal dictionaries imported the term in its narrowest application, specific to the book trade and authorial rights. A researcher encountering contrefacon in English legal sources should apply the narrower copyright-specific meaning; a researcher working in French primary sources must be alert to the term's broader application depending on context and period.
Common Confusion
Contrefacon is sometimes loosely equated with counterfeiting in the sense of currency or trademark fraud. In the French legal tradition the word does cover that broader territory, but in English legal dictionaries — Black's, Bouvier's — the term was imported specifically to describe the book-copyright offense. Do not read the English legal dictionary definition as encompassing trademark counterfeiting or currency fraud; those concepts carry their own terminology in both systems. Additionally, contrefacon should not be confused with plagiarism, which is a related but distinct wrong focused on misattribution of authorship rather than unauthorized reproduction and distribution.
Why It Matters in Research
Contrefacon appears in English legal dictionaries as a borrowed civil-law term, not as a term of art in Anglo-American common law. Its presence in American or English legal research almost always signals one of three things: a treatise or court opinion drawing a civil-law analogy to explain copyright doctrine; a case or transaction with a French or Louisiana connection; or a historical analysis of early copyright law before English and American doctrine was fully systematized.
Researchers working in Louisiana materials should be especially attentive. Louisiana's civil-law heritage means French legal vocabulary — including terms like contrefacon — surfaces in both antebellum legal writing and in arguments about how civil-law copyright concepts should translate into Louisiana's hybrid legal system.
The standard citation in both Black's and Bouvier's is to Merlin's Répertoire universel et raisonné de jurisprudence, a foundational French legal encyclopedia. When tracing the doctrine behind the English definitions, Merlin is the primary source both dictionaries relied upon, and researchers needing doctrinal depth should go there rather than treating the dictionary entries as self-contained.
The term has diminished practical utility in modern American research because U.S. copyright law is now wholly statutory and the civil-law vocabulary has been displaced. It retains value in: historical copyright scholarship, comparative law analysis, and Louisiana legal history.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (1st and 2nd editions) and Bouvier's Law Dictionary are in substantive agreement: all three define contrefacon as the offense of printing, or causing to be printed, a book in which another holds copyright, without that person's authority. The formulations differ only in minor phrasing. Bouvier adds the phrase "author or his assigns," which usefully tracks the transferability of the right — acknowledging that copyright could be held by someone other than the original author. Black's both editions focus on the holder of the copyright without specifying the author/assign distinction explicitly.
All three entries cite Merlin's Répertoire as their authority, suggesting none of the English lexicographers engaged independently with French primary sources beyond that single reference work. This limits the doctrinal depth available through the dictionary entries alone.
What the historical dictionaries do not address: the evolution of French copyright law beyond the book trade; the expansion of contrefacon concepts to cover prints, engravings, and musical works that occurred in French law during the nineteenth century; and any procedural dimensions of how the offense was prosecuted. Researchers should not treat these entries as capturing the full scope of French law on the subject.
Jurisdictional Note
Contrefacon is a term of French civil law and carries no independent legal force in common law jurisdictions. Its relevance in American legal research is largely confined to Louisiana, comparative law scholarship, and historical analysis of copyright doctrine. Modern French intellectual property law, codified in the Code de la propriété intellectuelle, retains and substantially expands the concept of contrefaçon well beyond the book-trade origins reflected in these dictionary entries.