Question:

As most of us know, there are vaious auction houses offering Prince's worn costumes, shoes, jewelry and even demo and master tapes...with Warner Brothers entering into his estate litigation, what will happen to those people who smartly purchased those master references? Can WB sue to get those back or as long as they have one in their posession will they not pursue it?

If it's from an unreleased song, or anything Prince was already awarded back- then Warner Bros has no claim on it. Prince got his masters back a couple of years ago, and of course he owned the NPG Record stuff already.

Plus, it might not be that just because someone buys a piece of tape that they own the rights to do with it what they wish when it comes to pubishing. It reminds me of when Sony tried to tell users they were renting CDs, and that if they ever sold their Sony manufactured CD, they would have to erase any digital copy they had on their computer. For a short bit, Sony tried to discreetly install a program on people's computers to monitor this shit. A person on alt.music.prince said "What are they going to ban next? Sharpies?", referencing the fact that simply drawing a black ring on the inner most circle on the playable side of a CD (where the CD's index and library is stored) would negate the Sony program reading it as a Sony disc.

All that said, if Warner Bros has an exclusive license with NPG Record (ie: the estate) to distribute the music (which they do with these vinyl reissues coming out), whoever owns a physical tape wouldn't really matter. Plus there are often second copies of masters for future uses, as well.