One of the major questions I’ve had regarding intellectual property rights and copyright laws has to do with the issue of work composed by deceased writers. Many of the classes I have taken at Lafayette, particularly the history courses I’ve completed, involved reading several scholarly articles, some dating back hundreds of years. I have always been curious as to exactly who exactly would own the rights to these readings when the original authors have been dead for some time. Common sense tells me that many of these works would find themselves in the public domain. However, I would like to know if there are any exceptions to this, and if there are any cases in which ownership of such scholarly articles has been disputed.