An Artist Renounced His Family. They Sued to Acquire His Life’s Work.; The New York Times, March 11, 2026

 Arthur Lubow , The New York Times; An Artist Renounced His Family. They Sued to Acquire His Life’s Work. 

A settlement is reached in the case of Mike Disfarmer, who renounced his family. Decades later they sued to take back his life’s work. When heirs battle the people who built their legacies, the art may be at stake.

"Art scholars and experts on intellectual property law say the litigation over the Disfarmer archive poses consequential ethical and legal questions, among them: Who should manage the estate of an artist who dies without a will? Heirs who hardly knew him — or outsiders, including museums, who built and conserved the estates that are now worth fighting over?

The Disfarmer litigation raises some of the same issues — and indeed, involves some of the same players — as the lawsuits initiated by families of two other reclusive American artists who died without wills: Vivian Maier and Henry Darger, who both lived in Chicago. All three were unrecognized during their lifetimes and out of touch with their relatives. When their estates belatedly became valuable, distant cousins stepped up to demand their rights. The law would dictate the outcome. But some question whether the law always serves an artist’s best interests."

UW System's copyright policy: What it means for professors; Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, December 2, 2024

 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; UW System's copyright policy: What it means for professors

"The University of Wisconsin System's proposed copyright policy aims to transfer ownership of faculty teaching materials to the university."

From Roald Dahl to Goosebumps, revisions to children’s classics are really about copyright – a legal expert explains; The Conversation, March 7, 2023

Cathay Smith, The Conversation ; From Roald Dahl to Goosebumps, revisions to children’s classics are really about copyright – a legal expert explains

"Over the past decades, authors, copyright owners and publishers have edited and updated children’s books. They have removed racial stereotypes, reflected changing gender and cultural norms and in doing so, maintained their books’ relevance and appeal to the modern reader.

Hugh Lofting’s The Story of Doctor Dolittle (1920), Dr. Seuss’s And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street (1937), Helen Bannerman’s The Story of Little Black Sambo (1899), Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) and classic children’s books series such as Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew have all changed to keep up with increasing sensitivities to racial, gender and other social stereotypes...

Copyright law grants its holder the exclusive right to edit a copyrighted children’s book and the right to limit publication of a work. This means that during a book’s copyright term, the copyright holder has the right to make edits that maintain the book’s popularity and commercial viability. 

This is true even when an author no longer owns the copyright to their work. In those situations, the copyright holder generally has the right to make edits to the work even without the author’s consent, as Goosebumps author R.L. Stine recently discovered."