Can abandonment be irrevocable?

[Peter Fairbrother]

I wrote:
 
> Does the author actually "lose" copyright by abandonment? Lose ownership?
> Lose the copyright itself? If so, what happens to it? Copyright exists by
> statute until expiry, so afaict it can't just "disappear".
> 
> Copyright is a legal, as opposed to a natural or equitable right, and every
> text on rights I have read says that legal rights cannot be abandoned.
> 
> The defense of abandonment of copyright seems to either fly in the face of
> that, or perhaps something else happens? Nimmer says that what happens is
> that "The plaintiff's claim of ownership is thereby countered.", but that
> does not explain what happens to the author's ownership, or the copyright
> itself.

I think I may now have a better idea as to what happens.


Alice makes an act indicating abandonment of her ownership of a right under
copyright. She cannot abandon the right itself, for instance because there
are responsibilities connected with it, and because it's a right under
statute; but she can abandon her ownership of the right.

If Bob then violates the right Alice is equitably estopped from asserting
ownership against Bob. This is the basis for the defence of abandonment in a
copyright claim.

"Equitable estoppel prevents one party from taking a different position at
trial than she did at an earlier time if the other party would be harmed by
the change."

Which leaves the questions:

1) can Alice can regain ownership of the right?

2) if so, is Alice then estopped from asserting ownership against Charles?

Assuming there is no harm to Charles beyond the need to obtain a licence,
the answer to 2) is almost certainly no.

Does this sound correct?

What about 1)? How could Alice go about it??


Thanks,

-- 
Peter Fairbrother

--
license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3