Publication

Making something known to the community at large, exhibiting, displaying, disclosing, or revealing.

Publication is the act of offering something for the general public to inspect or scrutinize. It means to convey knowledge or give notice.

In Copyright law, publication is making a book or other written material available to anyone interested by distributing or offering it for sale. In the law of Libel and Slander, publication means communicating the statement in issue to a third person other than the plaintiff (the individual whom the alleged defamatory statement concerns).

Publication of a will refers to the testator's informing the witnesses to the document of his or her intent to have the instrument operate as a will.

In the procedural rules governing the Practice of Law, publication of a summons is the process of publishing it in a newspaper, when required by law, in order to notify a defendant of the lawsuit.

---

publication n. 1) anything made public by print (as in a newspaper, magazine, pamphlet, letter, telegram, computer modem or program, poster, brochure or pamphlet), orally, or by broadcast (radio, television). 2) placing a legal notice in an approved newspaper of general publication in the county or district in which the law requires such notice to be published. 3) in the law of defamation (libel and slander) publication of an untruth about another only requires giving the information to a single person. Thus one letter can be the basis of a suit for libel, and telling one person is sufficient to show publication of slander. (See: notice, defamation, libel, slander)

---

PUBLICATION. The act by which a thing is made public.
     2. It differs from promulgation, (q.v.) and see also Toullier, Dr. Civ. Fr. Titre Preliminaire, n. 59, for the difference in the meaning of these two words.
     3. Publication has different meanings. When applied to a law, it signifies the rendering public the existence of the law; when it relates to the opening the depositions taken in a case in chancery, it means that liberty is given to the officer in whose custody the depositions of witnesses in a cause are lodged, either by consent of parties, or by the rules or orders of the court, to show the depositions openly, and to give out copies of them. Pract. Reg. 297; 1 Harr. Ch. Pr. 345; Blake's Ch. Pr. 143. When it refers to a libel, it is its communication to a second or third person, or a greater number. Holt on Libels, 254, 255, 290; Stark. on Slander, 350; Holt's N. P. Rep. 299; 2 Bl. R. 1038; 1 Saund. 112, n. 3. And when spoken of a will, it signifies that the testator has done some act from which it can be concluded that he intended the instrument to operate as his will. Cruise, Dig. tit. 38, c. 5, s. 47; 3 Atk. 161; 4 Greenl. R. 220; 3 Rawle, R. 15; Com. Dig. Estates by devise, E 2. Vide Com. Dig. Chancery, Q; Id. Libel, B 1; Ibid. Action upon the case for defamation, G 4; Roscoe's Cr. Ev. 529; Bac. Ab. Libel, B; Hawk. P. C. B. 1, c. 73, s. 10; 3 Yeates' R. 128; 10 Johns. R. 442. As to the publication of an award, see 6 N. H. Rep. 36. See, generally, Bouv. Inst. Index, h.t.