The distinction between the physical object and the copyright in it is fundamental and applies to any work of authorship, no matter how far down the totem pole of artistic creation the wok may lie. Thus cases dealing with letters written from one person to another have held that, although the property interest in the physical object passes from writer to recipient, the right to reproduce the contents and the copyright generally can be retained by the writer when there is evidence of such an interest. Folson v. Marsh (1941)(No.4901). Similarly, Chamberlain v. Feldman (1949) held that the transferee of a manuscript, did not have the legal owner of the manuscript, did not have the right to claim the copyright and thus to reproduce and publish the contents. Under the common law, sale of a work of authorship conveyed not only the physical object itself but also presumably conveyed all of the exclusive rights under the copyright as well. Pushman v. New York Graphic Society(1942).
That is no longer the law under the new Act. For all practical purposes, the situation in fact is reversed. Under section 202, the sale of the tangible object does not impliedly convey the copyright; likewise, the sale of a copyright or of any of the exclusive rights does not imply the sale of the tangible object. Section 204 indicates that any agreement to convey copyright must explicitly do so in writing to be valid.