After four years of legal wrangling, the Oscar statuette that Orson Welles won for co-writing "Citizen Kane" will finally go up for auction. Sotheby's will put it on the block on Dec. 11.

Back in 2003, Christie's tried to sell the statuette, but had to shut down the auction when academy lawyers pounced. Theoretically, there should've been no opposition. Since Welles won the award in 1941, that was before the introduction of a policy in 1950 that banned winners from selling their Oscars to anyone but the academy (for $1).

Welles' statuette was considered to be lost for many years, but surfaced in 1994 when it was put up for auction at Sotheby's by a cinematographer who claimed that Welles once gave it to him in lieu of a payment owed. Welles' youngest daughter Beatrice sued and got ownership of the Oscar, which she tried to sell at Christie's 9 years later, but in turn got sued by the academy.

The academy claimed she couldn't sell it because of an agreement she signed in the 1980s when she was given a replacement Oscar before the return of the original. The document said that the person who signed the contract agreed never to sell the replacement statuette or the original, if it ever resurfaced.

But when the case went to court Welles' daughter won because of the way the agreement had been worded. It only applied to academy members and she doesn't belong. She also won the right to sell the lifetime achievement Oscar he received in 1970, but she has not yet put it on the block.

After the court's verdict, she sold the screenplay Oscar to the Dax Corporation for an undisclosed sum. Now they're putting it up for sale and the timing may be good. Back in 2003, Christie's projected that the statuette would fetch about $400,000. Now Sotheby's estimate is $800,000 to $1.2 million.

An auctioneer pal of mine, who's sold me many historic showbiz awards, says that Sotheby's estimate "is aggressive, but they might get that much."