Cummins v Bond
Cummins v Bond was a 1927 copyright legal case in England in which it was decided that if a spirit or ghost dictates a work to the living through a medium, then the medium owns the copyright, and not the spirit or a subsequent transcriber.[1][2]
The case
Miss Geraldine Cummins was a professional medium who used a pen to write down a message by a 1900-year-old spirit, Cleophas, which was addressed to an architect, Mr Bligh Bond, who was present in the session. After she wrote it, Bligh Bond typed the message himself.[3] Mr 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 over the afterlife and therefore the copyright holder and sole author is Cummins because she was the one who held the pen.[3]
See also
References
- ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2013-10-06. Retrieved 2013-09-28.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - ^ Patry, William (2005-08-10). "The Patry Copyright Blog: Authorship and Religion". The Patry Copyright Blog. Retrieved 2020-04-04.
- ^ a b Cousins, Wendy. "Writer, Medium, Suffragette, Spy? The Unseen Adventures of Geraldine Cummins".
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