I recently got into a discussion about copyright and ownership. The person was arguing that when you illegally copy an item, then the copy is owned by the original author. As such he argues that they can claim it to be theft in addition to copyright infringement.
That got me to thinking about pirated physical goods. If a factory produces an identical product such as an iPhone, selling it as such and pay no royalties to Apple. Can Apple then claim ownership of the counterfeits?
And if load a harddrive with copyrighted material, can the copyright holders claim that they own the harddrive?
This is a generic question, so I'm curious to hear what the laws are around the world.