Intellectual Property Law: Who Will Inherit Your Digital Content Files?
By Karla Robinson
August 31, 2012
August 31, 2012
- U.S. consumers spend around $360 a year on e-books and MP3 files, according to e-commerce company Bango.
- Over the years, that investment can add up to thousands of valuable content files. As of today, those files will essentially be lost when a person passes away because intellectual property law doesn’t have a way to transfer licensing rights.
- “Part of the problem is that with digital content, one doesn’t have the same rights as with print books and CDs,” explains SmartMoney. “Customers own a license to use the digital files — but they don’t actually own them. Apple and Amazon grant ‘nontransferable’ rights to use content.”
- “The law is light years away from catching up with the types of assets we have in the 21st Century,” says Deirdre R. Wheatley-Liss, an estate planning attorney. Lecturer and researcher Dazza Greenwood agrees: “We need to reform and update intellectual property law.”
- Now that much of consumers’ assets are digital, losing that content at their death means losing significant value. Relatives can possibly access the content using their loved one’s devices, but passwords can be restrictive and there isn’t always an easy way to divide up assets.
- Attorney David Goldman hopes to set up a legal trust for people’s online accounts, which differs from mere online safe-deposit boxes.
- “Having access to digital content and having the legal right to use it are two totally different things,” he says. “With traditional estate planning and wills, there’s no way to give the right to someone to access this kind of information after you’re gone.”
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