In recent years the university had charged the Warburg increasingly large fees for the use of the university-owned building that houses it, placing the institute in financial peril and causing concern that the university might want to move it and split up its collections, which were organized according to a unique system.
The judge said that the university’s fee-collecting system “flies in the face” of the deed that requires the university to safeguard the institute’s “special character.”
In a statement, Leticia Jennings, a lawyer who represented the Warburg, said that the ruling came “to the benefit and relief of scholars worldwide” and made clear that the university “is obliged to provide funding for the activities of the Warburg Institute” and maintain it “as an independent unit” within the university. She added that the ruling made clear that the collection “will remain available as before, in its entirety and that the university will not be free to in any way restrict the access of the many scholars who use and rely on the Institute’s outstanding resources.”
In a separate statement the University of London said that it had never intended to break up the Warburg’s collection and that the ruling left “an area of uncertainty” about how university funds the institute. It acknowledged that the judge had “criticized” the university’s practice of charging institutes for the use of university real estate. The university, which has said that the case should never have gone to court, plans to appeal the ruling.