Like the 1774 Donaldson v. Beckett case in Great Britain, the French royal provisions of 30 August 1777, regarding the duration of exclusive privileges, constituted an essential date in the history of literary property. Such property had been claimed at least from the 1720s onwards, notably from the Parisian booksellers and their lawyers. However, the author’s preeminence remained theoretical, until some writers, along a few emblematic judicial cases, contested the bookseller’s corporative hegemony, starting by the symbolic wish to be able to sell their own productions. The decree thus seemed to confirm concretely this evolution, by securing an unprecedented perpetual right to authors, while simultaneously restricting its effects if they chose to transfer their work and privilege to a bookseller. Moreover, these rather convoluted provisions came at the price of a redefinition of the traditional conception of book trade privilege. Nevertheless, although criticized at the time, and despite contradictory interpretations, it appears, upon the principles it settled, that this ultimate legislation of the Ancien Régime can be intimately linked with the revolutionary laws to come.