The Court decided:(1) The bequest of “private papers” passed only the property in the
physical manuscript of The Life of Christ, not any copyright in it.(2) The bequest of Dickens’s “personal estate” passed all the author’s
copyrights, and would have done so even if the word “copyright” had
not been specifically mentioned.(3) The consent of both estates would be needed before the manuscript
of The Life of Christcould practicably be published:In Re Dickens [1935] Ch. 267 (U.K.: High Court & Court of Appeal)MR JUSTICE BENNETT in the High Court:The common law [has] this conception with regard to rights of property in a literary work
written, marked or impressed or otherwise recorded upon some material thing namely, that the
material thing might, as a subject of property, be separated from the literary work recorded on it
and that the literary work might be regarded as an incorporeal subject of property and be owned
separately from the material thing upon which it was recorded. ...The question to be answered is: Did Georgina Hogarth take the two species of property, the
physical thing, the manuscript, and also the incorporeal property, the copyright, or did she only
take the physical thing, the manuscript?LORD JUSTICE MAUGHAM in the Court of Appeal:This work was written by the author not for publication but for the benefit of his family, and he
retained it for their private study. ... Some copies were made with the author’s permission, one,
for instance, for his eldest son...; but the work was unpublished in the author’s lifetime and was
not intended for publication. In these circumstances, I am of opinion that, like letters, diaries and
memoranda, it comes fairly within the description of private papers. The manuscript, that is the
pieces of paper with the writing on them, therefore passed on the death of the author to Miss
Hogarth.[I]f Charles Dickens had finished some novel or story but had not published it at the date of his
death, it would have passed under the bequest of his copyrights. Nor can I see that any different
conclusion should be arrived at in the present case because of the bequest to Miss Hogarth of
“all his private papers whatsoever.” This phrase, standing alone, obviously does not properly or
naturally carry with it a right to publish private papers. ... In my opinion, on the true construction
of the will, the exclusive right to publish the Life of Christpassed to [the trustees of Dickens’s
children], whilst the original manuscript became the personal property of Miss Hogarth. If the
trustees and Miss Hogarth could not agree there would be a sort of deadlock. The trustees might,
perhaps, have published from a copy, but Miss Hogarth could not properly have published from
the original without the consent of the trustees. ...LORD JUSTICE ROMER:If one person had been the owner of the copyright and another the owner of the manuscript,
neither one singly could have conferred upon the purchasers the rights conferred by the deed of(^12) assignment. The copyright was practically worthless if the purchaser could not make use of the