Law, crime and regulation

Several items stolen from Derby Museum and Art Gallery’s storage facility have been recovered and two arrests have been made.

Medals awarded to one of Britain’s greatest military heroes are still missing after being stolen from the Redoubt Fortress and Military Museum in Eastbourne.

A temporary export bar has been placed on a Picasso early work which was on display last year at London’s Courtauld Gallery.

COMMENT: The ongoing crisis at the heart of government is becoming a national disease as a proposed change in copyright law illustrates, says Ivan Macquisten

Coins, medals and watches worth over £50,000 have been stolen as a series of museum break-ins continues.

Parisian auctioneer Claude Aguttes has been banned from holding sales for two months following an investigation into the sale of a Russian painting at the Hôtel Drouot in October 2007.

Two men have been charged with theft after Henry Moore’s ‘Working Model for Sundial 1965’ sculpture and a bronze plinth were stolen from his former home.

Home owners who have valuable antiques are being warned by police to be vigilant after three burglaries in the space of three days in the Brighton and Hove area.

Portobello Road antiques dealers have a fresh chance to air their views about police cover in the area now that a public meeting has been rearranged.

When police raided one of the most prominent January coin sales in New York no-one was quite sure why.

The second most significant gem of its type in the country – a Parthian-Sassanian intaglio (in brown-grey agate) – has been stolen from a house near Evesham.

Paintings and smaller works of art dating back to the time the first Duke of Wellington moved into the house given to him by a grateful nation have been stolen.

Baroness Wilcox, the minister responsible for the Artist’s Resale Right, has told postcard campaigner Niall Fairhead that the Government won’t change the qualifying threshold for the levy.

Proposals to extend copyright on some designs from 25 to 70 years could set off a whole new era of legal disputes.

Below is the full text of the statement made by Baroness Wilcox, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, on June 14, 2012.

Antique firearm collectors and dealers are at risk of prosecution because of gun ownership laws. The warning comes from firearms law expert Laura Saunsbury, of Lewis Nedas & Co solicitors in Camden, London. The firm have been involved in recent cases where possession of antique weapons has been the issue.

Pressure for better police cover is starting to pay off for Portobello antiques dealers – but they say there is still much to be done. The traders have been incensed by cuts that left just four officers to patrol the area in pairs on Saturdays despite a recent rise in robberies, and demanded action on extra patrols.

COMMENT: As reported last week, the postcard campaign launched by art dealer Niall Fairhead in a bid to raise the threshold for the Artist's Resale Right has made progress, attracting more signatories for the online petition and eliciting answers from the Intellectual Property Office (IPO).

Four suspected thieves were due to appear in court in connection with a series of burglaries at six auction houses in the south of England last year.

A medieval Nottingham alabaster plaque prised away from a London church has been recovered after the appeal in ATG.