Law, crime and regulation

Three men have been jailed for a total of 18 years for their involvement in the theft of Chinese artefacts from the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

The 14th century Wenlok Jug has been returned to a Luton museum after it was stolen in May.

Fishermen are reported to have discovered another ancient shipwreck, complete with cargo, in the South China Sea near Vung Tau off the South East coast of Vietnam.

The antiques trade could soon fall victim to the global rattan shortage prompted by an Indonesian export ban.

Leading copyright lawyer Simon Stokes has just published the Second Edition of ‘Artist’s Resale Right’, the industry guide to the law as it applies to Droit de Suite.

A 51-year-old man has been arrested in connection with ‘bounced cheques’ at an antiques fair.

Two men have been jailed for a string of burglaries across the South East which included taking a rhino head from Haslemere Museum in Surrey.

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.