A fascinating legal battle is shaping up regarding
the ownership of "The Joan Anderson Letter", a December 17, 1950
letter written by Beat prototype Neal Cassady to Jack Kerouac. The letter's
value stems from its stream-of-consciousness style - which is generally
accepted to have served as the template for Kerouac's 1957 book "On the
Road" - the Bible of the Beatnik movement.
Cassady wrote the letter and sent it to
Kerouac. Sometime in 1951 or 1952,
Kerouac gave the letter to his friend and fellow author, Allen Ginsberg. The
provenance of the letter thereafter is a mystery, and it was long considered
lost to the ages. Then, in 2011, the letter was found among the papers of Los
Angeles record producer Jack Spinosa. His daughter Jean found it, and after
spending several years authenticating it, has now offered it for auction.
Which brings us to the cast of claimants for the
letter. The estate of the letter's author, Neal Cassady, claims that the
copyright in the letter is the property of the Estate. The Estate of Jack Kerouac claims the letter,
presumably on the grounds that by sending it to Kerouac, Cassady transferred
any ownership rights to Kerouac. And the Estate of Jack Spinosa claims the
letter, on the grounds that Mr. Spinosa apparently came into valid ownership of
it sometime after Kerouac gave it to Ginsberg.
As the finder of lost property, Jean Spinosa can claim the letter under
the doctrine that the finder of lost property is entitled to a superior claim
of ownership against everyone other than the true owner, whom in this case she
will likely claim is her father.
Historians of the Beat era don't have a horse in
this race, but are anxiously standing by to see who ends up with ownership of
the letter, in the hopes that the new owner will either donate it to a museum
or archive, or otherwise make it available for review and use by scholars.
As
for me, it looks like a great law school exam problem! Keep your eyes on this
one - some new law may come out of it as to ownership of this kind of intellectual
property.
