Cummins v. Bond [1927] 1 Ch. 167 (U.K.: High Court)[The plaintiff claimed that, during trances, she had automatically written down a
work transmitted to her by a disembodied spirit from centuries ago. She sued
the defendant for copyright infringement by including her transcripts in a
newspaper without her authority. The defendant argued that the work had no
copyright because the plaintiff was not an author at all.]MR JUSTICE EVE:The issue in this action is reduced to the simple question who, if any one, is the owner of the
copyright in this work. Prima facieit is the author, and so far as this world is concerned there
can be no doubt who is the author here, for it has been abundantly proved that the plaintiff is the
writer of every word to be found in this bundle of original script. But the plaintiff and her witness
and the defendant are all of opinion - and I do not doubt that the opinion is an honest one - that
the true originator of all that is to be found in these documents is some being no longer
inhabiting this world, and who has been out of it for a length of time sufficient to justify the hope
that he has no reasons for wishing to return to it.According to the case put forward by those entertaining the opinion I have referred to the
individual in question [chooses] the plaintiff as the medium through whom [to communicate] his
views ... [He] selects a medium capable of translating his messages into language appropriate
to a period some sixteen or seventeen centuries after his death. ... I think I have stated enough
with regard to the antiquity of the source and the language in which the communications are
written to indicate that they could not have reached us in this form without the active co-
operation of some agent competent to translate them from the language in which they were
communicated to her into something more intelligible to persons of the present day. The plaintiff
claims to be this agent and to possess, and the defendant admits that she does possess, some
qualification enabling her, when in a more or less unconscious condition, to reproduce in
language understandable by those who have the time and inclination to read it, information
supplied to her from the source referred to in language with which the plaintiff has no
acquaintance when fully awake.From this it would almost seem as though the individual who has been dead and buried for some
1900-odd years and the plaintiff ought to be regarded as the joint authors and owners of the
copyright, but inasmuch as I do not feel myself competent to make any declaration in his favour,
and recognizing as I do that I have no jurisdiction extending to the sphere in which he moves, I
think I ought to confine myself when inquiring who is the author to individuals who were alive
when the work first came into existence and to conditions which the legislature in 1911 may
reasonably be presumed to have contemplated. So doing it would seem to be clear that the
authorship rests with this lady, to whose gift of extremely rapid writing coupled with a peculiar
ability to reproduce in archaic English matter communicated to her in some unknown tongue we
owe the production of these documents. ...[The defendant further] submits that there is no copyright in the work at all that it has come from
a far off locality which I cannot specify, and that the plaintiff is the mere conduit pipe by which
it has been conveyed to this world. I do not think that is a fair appreciation of the plaintiff ’s
activities, they obviously involved a great deal more than mere repetition; but, apart altogether
from these considerations, the conclusion which the defendant invites me to come to in this
submission involves the expression of an opinion I am not prepared to make, that the authorship
and copyright rest with some one already domiciled on the other side of the inevitable river. That(^110) is a matter I must leave for solution by others more competent to decide it than I am. I can only