Cummins v Bond was a 1927
copyright
A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...
legal case in
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
in which it was decided that if a spirit or
ghost
A ghost is the soul or spirit of a dead person or animal that is believed to be able to appear to the living. In ghostlore, descriptions of ghosts vary widely from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes, to rea ...
dictates a work to the living through a
medium
Medium may refer to:
Science and technology
Aviation
*Medium bomber, a class of war plane
* Tecma Medium, a French hang glider design
Communication
* Media (communication), tools used to store and deliver information or data
* Medium of ...
, then the medium owns the copyright, and not the spirit or a subsequent transcriber.
The case
Geraldine Cummins
Geraldine Dorothy Cummins (1890–1969) was an Irish spiritualist medium, novelist and playwright. She began her career as a creative writer, but increasingly concentrated on mediumship and "channelled" writings, mostly about the lives of Jesus a ...
was a professional
medium
Medium may refer to:
Science and technology
Aviation
*Medium bomber, a class of war plane
* Tecma Medium, a French hang glider design
Communication
* Media (communication), tools used to store and deliver information or data
* Medium of ...
who used a pen to write down a message that she claimed to been written by a 1900-year-old spirit, Cleophas. The message was addressed to an
architect
An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...
,
Bligh Bond, who was present in the session, and after she wrote it, Bond typed the message himself.
Bond claimed copyright on the resulting text because it was addressed to him and typed by him.
After two days of court hearings, the court decided that it had no
jurisdiction
Jurisdiction (from Latin 'law' + 'declaration') is the legal term for the legal authority granted to a legal entity to enact justice. In federations like the United States, areas of jurisdiction apply to local, state, and federal levels.
Jur ...
over the
afterlife
The afterlife (also referred to as life after death) is a purported existence in which the essential part of an individual's identity or their stream of consciousness continues to live after the death of their physical body. The surviving ess ...
and therefore the copyright holder and sole author was Cummins because she was the one who held the pen.
See also
*
Copyright on religious works
In regards to copyright on religious works, it is not always clear who the rightsholder is. Under the provisions of the Berne Convention, copyright is granted to the author on the creation of the work. Several religions claim that all or some of ...
*
Sweat of the brow
Sweat of the brow is an intellectual property law doctrine that is chiefly related to copyright law. According to this doctrine, an author gains rights through simple diligence during the creation of a work, such as a database, or a directory. ...
References
{{Reflist
External links
*http://www.jaani.net/resources/law_notes/intellectual_property/02_Subsistence.pdf (page 14)
*http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/valr13&div=9&id=&page=
United Kingdom copyright case law
1927 in case law
1927 in British law
High Court of Justice cases