DEDICATION

Solemn appropriation. It may be expressed or implied. 2. An express dedication of property to public use is made by a direct appropriation of it to such use, and it will be enforced. 3. But a dedication of property to public or pious uses may be implied from the acts of the owner. A permission to the public for the space of eight or even six years, to use a street without bar or impediment, is evidence from which a dedication to the public may be inferred. In real property law. An appropriation of land to some public use, made by the owner, and accepted for such use by or on behalf of the public; a deliberate appropriation of land by its owner for any general and public uses, reserving to himself no other rights than such as are compatible with the full exercise and enjoyment of the public uses to which the property has been devoted. People v. Marin County, 103 Oal. 223, 37 Pac. 203, 26 L. R. A. 659; Gro gan v. Hayward (C. C.) 4 Fed. 161; Gowan t. Philadelphia Exch. Co., 5 Watts & S. (Pa.) 141, 40 Am. Dec. 489; Alden Coal Co. v. Challis, 200 111. 222, 65 N. E. 665; Barteau v. West, 23 Wis. 416; Wood v. Hurd, 34 N. J. Law, 87. Express or implied. A dedication may be express, as where the intention to dedicate is expressly manifested by a deed or an explicit oral or written declaration of the owner, or some other explicit manifestation of his purpose to devote the land to the public use. An implied dedication may be shown by some act or course of conduct on the part of the owner from which a reasonable inference of intent may be drawn, or which is inconsistent with any other theory than that he intended a dedication. Culmer v. Salt Lake City, 27 Utah, 252, 75 Pac. 620; San Antonio v. Sullivan, 23 Tex. Civ. App. 619, 57 S. W. 42; Kent v. Pratt, 73 Conn. 573, 48 Atl. 418; Hurley v. West St. Paul, 83 Minn. 401, 86 N. W. 427; People v. Marin County, 103 Cal. 223, 37 Pac 203, 26 L. R. A. 659. Common law or statutory. A common law dedication is one made as above described, and may be either express or implied. A statutory dedication is one made under and in conformity with the provisions of a statute regulating the subject, and is of course necessarily express. San Antonio v. Sullivan, 23 Tex. Civ. App. 619, 57 S. W. 42; People v. Marin County, 103 Cal. 223, 37 Pac. 203, 26 L. R. A. 659. In copyright law. The fiist publication of a work, without having secured a copyright, is a dedication of it to the public; that having been done, any one may republish it.