The story of the Ben Wicks cartoons has been garnering coverage lately:
The children of the late cartoonist Ben Wicks went to court yesterday to try to reclaim 2,408 vintage drawings left behind in a move.
Vincent Wicks, the cartoonist's son, moved from Keswick to Vancouver 15 years ago, leaving a bunch of garbage bags including three full of Ben Wicks cartoons.
They were discovered by Richard Harnett, the new homeowner's brother. The two brothers kept the work and, six years ago, Richard proposed they publish a book with the best material.
It would be interesting to see the pleadings in the case. It appears from news reports that the Harnetts are claiming ownership of the physical drawings, but not asserting any ownership in the copyright to the drawings (which is why the Harnetts approached the Wicks, because the Harnetts would need authorization from the copyright owner in order to publish (i.e., make copies) of the drawings).
The case highlights the distinction between ownership of the physical vehicle on which copyrighted work is carried (i.e., the canvas on which a painting is painted) and ownership of the intellectual property rights in the work itself (i.e., the painting). At a guess, the Harnetts are likely arguing that the property (i.e., the pieces of paper themselves) was abandoned (on a sort of "finder's keepers" theory), and are seeking the right to sell the cartoons at an auction or something similar - an art appraiser is noted as having estimated a value of over $55,000 dollars for the nearly 2,500 drawings.
While real property can clearly be abandoned through lack of assertion of ownership, it isn't as clear that intellectual property rights can be - though you can gift or quitclaim any intellectual property rights, that requires a positive action on the part of the former owner. In any event, section 14 of the Canadian Copyright Act contains a provision which provides that copyright ownership in a work reverts to the estate of a deceased creator twenty-five years following death, regardless of any intervening license - query whether that would apply to any purported "abandonment" of the copyright.
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