A California judge has upheld the legal right of Oscars organisers to ban victors or their heirs from selling priceless statuettes on the open market, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

In a blow to collectors and auctioneers, Los Angeles superior court judge Gail Ruderman Feuer handed victory to the US Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in a legal wrangle over Joseph Wright’s 1943 Oscar for colour art direction, received for his work on the film My Gal Sal.

Wright’s nephew Joseph Tutalo had sold the statuette at auction, in contravention of a 1951 Academy bylaw that requires winners to offer any Oscars back to the organisation for $10 before attempting to sell them on the open market. Though the statuette had passed to Hollywood memorabilia auctioneer Nate D Sanders, who paid $79,200 for it, the judge ruled that the law remained binding on Oscar-winners and their heirs.

Academy CEO Dawn Hudson told the court the organisation “never intended the Oscar statuette to be treated as an article of trade,” and argued that “sale would diminish the value of the Academy’s Award of Merit, signified by the Oscar statuette”. She said the award was “diminished by distribution … through commercial efforts rather than in recognition of creative effort”.

Sanders had argued that the legal precedent covering the case, which dates to a concept known as “equitable servitude” originally borrowed from English law in the Victorian era, was largely outdated. But the judge disagreed and said the concept, which relates to the passing on of legal duties from one owner of a disputed property or item of goods to the next, remained in statute.

The Oscar-winner’s heir was at fault for selling the statue, even though Wright won his prize eight years before the Academy introduced its bylaw, because the film-maker retained his membership of the organisation, the judge ruled. The resolution of the case means statuettes awarded from 1951 onwards are highly unlikely to become available on the legal market in future.