Discussing last week a Court decision regarding the title of
a writer to retain, and use elsewhere, a pseudonym under which he has been writing in a particular paper, I suggested that it would make all the difference whether the pseudonym was invented by the writer himself (or herself) or supplied by the paper ; in the latter case it would seem clearly to be the paper's property. But this apparently is not the law. The only report I saw of the action brought against the Sunday Times by a lady .who wrote for that paper under the pseudonym "Mary Delane ' failed to make clear, what I understand is the fact, that in this case it was the paper itself which supplied the pseudonym. The learned Judge decided, none the less, that it remained the pro- perty of the writer and that no other journalist could use it in the Sunday Times. From which it follows, I suppose, that " Mary Delane " can write as " Mary Delane " elsewhere. It seems pretty hard lines on the newspaper.
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