## Facts

- Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc. owned copyrights in more than 500 pulp-magazine stories first published in the 1930s and 1940s.
- David Leach operated websites through which he sold scanned digital copies of those stories without Advance’s permission.
- Advance sued for copyright infringement and related statutory violations and sought partial summary judgment on liability.
- Leach, proceeding pro se, admitted copying and selling the works but claimed he acquired the copyrights through adverse possession and that this amounted to a transfer “by operation of law.”

## Issues

1. Whether copyright ownership can be acquired through adverse possession.
2. Whether an alleged adverse-possession acquisition qualifies as a “transfer by operation of law” under 17 U.S.C. § 201(d).
3. Whether, on an undisputed record, the plaintiff was entitled to partial summary judgment on ownership and infringement.

## Decision

- The court granted Advance’s motion for partial summary judgment on copyright ownership and infringement liability.
- The court held copyrights are not subject to acquisition by adverse possession.
- The court held adverse possession is not a “transfer by operation of law” within the meaning of the Copyright Act.
- With Leach’s defenses rejected as a matter of law and copying undisputed, no genuine issue of material fact remained on liability.

## Legal Principles

- Copyright ownership and transfers are governed by federal statute; courts will not recognize non-statutory, state-law methods as independent routes to copyright title.
- Unauthorized exploitation of a copyrighted work, even if open and continuous over time, does not mature into copyright ownership.
- “Transfer by operation of law” under 17 U.S.C. § 201(d) refers to legally recognized transfer mechanisms (e.g., inheritance, merger, bankruptcy) and does not include adverse possession.

## Conclusion

The court determined that adverse possession cannot confer copyright ownership and that such a theory does not fit the Copyright Act’s “operation of law” transfer category; because Advance showed valid ownership and Leach admitted unlicensed reproduction and distribution, the court entered partial summary judgment on liability.


Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc. v. Leach, 466 F. Supp. 2d 628 (D. Md. 2006)