🚀 go-pugleaf

In the Salinger case, the author of the book in which Salinger's letters
were to be published argued that the letters were the property of the
recipient, who had agreed to allow their publication. Judgement was for
Salinger: the recipient owned the physical pieces of paper, but Salinger
owned the copyright on the original work.

As for `Post Office Patents', nobody would dream of trying to date a
patent that way. In the case of a copyright, though, the issue is simply
proving priority. A registration frank on an unopened envelope will do
that satisfactorily in Canada (we don't have as widespread use of
notaries as does the US). 

--
\    Vincent Manis <manis@cs.ubc.ca>      "There is no law that vulgarity and
 \   Department of Computer Science      literary excellence cannot coexist."
 /\  University of British Columbia                        -- A. Trevor Hodge
/  \ Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1W5 (604) 228-2394