The lawyer of a 90-year-old woman, who mistakenly started filling in an art exhibit in the form of a crossword puzzle, claims that she holds the copyright of the "new" work. The 1977 creation by the 20th-century artist Arthur Köpcke was lent to Nuremberg’s Neues Museum by a private collector, and is said to be worth around £68,000.

The retired German dentist, Hannelore K.—her full name has not been released—visited the gallery along with other pensioners last month. During a half-hour interview with the local police following the discovery of her additions to Köpcke's creation, the woman said that she started filling in the artwork's crossword puzzle because it bore the phrases "Insert words" and "so it suits."

These were written in English, a language she understands, and she took them to be a serious invitation to use the crossword clues to fill in the empty squares. She said that if the museum did not want people to follow the artist's instructions, they should have placed a warning notice alongside it.

The answers to the crossword clues were written in biro, and have now been removed. But the German pensioner is still under investigation by the police, and her lawyer has produced a seven-page rebuttal to the accusation of damaging property.

He says that far from harming the work in question, his client has increased its value by bringing the relatively-unknown Köpcke to the attention of a wider public. Moreover, her "invigorating re-working" of the exhibit further increased its worth.

Indeed, Frau K.'s lawyer claimed that her additions meant that she now held the copyright of the combined artwork—and that, in theory, the private collector might sue the museum for destroying that new collaboration by restoring it to its original state.

The lawyer also maintained that with her actions, Frau K. had been true to the spirit of Köpcke, and to the Fluxus movement he was a member of. An article on The Art Story site about Fluxus would seem to back up the view that the Neues Museum was wrong to condemn the pensioner's creation: "Fluxus artists did not agree with the authority of museums to determine the value of art, nor did they believe that one must be educated to view and understand a piece of art."

Moreover: "Fluxus art involved the viewer," which was certainly the case with Frau K.