Can my will gift digital files to specific people? A specific bequest is defined as such: the gift in a will of a certain article to a certain person or persons Here it says: A specific bequest is a gift (bequest) or a specific item or asset to a named person or entity. Does a computer file count as an item? Can I say that person A should get file A from my laptop and person B should get file B? I imagine that I can, but it is not immediately clear to me that "item" or "article" includes digital files.
Wills are governed by state law, but yes you may. Almost anything that can be legally owned/possessed can be bequeathed. When a copyright holder dies their copyrights (intangible property) are transfer to the estate or heirs as proscribed in the will or state law if no will exists.
It is certainly possible to transfer a copyright or other IP without an explicit charge, indeed it can be a pure gift, and normally would be when it is left by will, as is common enough. From a paid consultant it might be clearer to include a statement that the transfer is part of the consulting assignment, rather than putting a price of zero in a blank. But one could instead convey a permanent non-exclusive license, granting permission to use or modify the work in any way desired, ans saying that this is provided as part of the consulting process. Then there would be no question of what rights the consultant retained, or that the same or a very similar solution could be provided to different clients. Indeed such a license would not be so very different from a CC-BY license, or any of several open source licenses, although I would not use one of those by name. But the legal effect would be much the same, and the wording could be similar. Otherwise there could be a later claim that the right transferred precluded the consultant from using the same solution for other clients. Even if such a claim was not legally sound, and was not upheld, it could be a distraction and costly of time and energy at least.
The Will Itself The two main points that are exceptional in this case would be: (1) to name a legal guardian for the child, and (2) possibly, depending upon the size of your estate, to name a conservator for the child (like a guardian but for a child's property), or a custodian of property inherited by the child (basically a trustee of a small, simplified trust) or a trustee of a protective trust for the benefit of the child. You might want to name a &quot;trust protector&quot; of the protective trust as well as a trustee, so that there is a designated person to supervise the trustee's conduct during the child's minority who isn't your ex-spouse. A protective trust will have provisions related to age and conditions and purposes of distributions. For example, it might say distributions according to need for health, education, maintenance and support until age 25, then distribute a third outright, then distribute half of what's left at age 35 outright then distribute the balance at age 45, and it might specify &quot;safe harbor&quot; acceptable purposes like higher education, apprenticeships, weddings, and investing in businesses with a reasonable prospect of success. You should also probably provide for any family pets. Many lawyers have standard clauses for that. You may want to identify specific items of tangible personal property that should be reserved for the child's future use at your death (e.g. an heirloom wedding dress), even though it won't be immediately useful. The guardian wouldn't supersede the parental rights of the other parent, but would have priority together with anyone named by your ex, to serve as guardian if your ex is incapacitated as well. There really isn't too much else that you can do in a will as there is a deliberate desire to prevent dead hand control of a child. Non-Legal Economic Options You should consider buying life insurance and making a trust for the benefit of the child the beneficiary of it to fund a trust for the child if you die. Talk to a financial planner or life insurance agent about it. Non-Legal Sentimental Options Of course, there are classic non-legal steps such as writing birthday letters or recording birthday audio/video tapes for the child, if you know that death is imminent and finding someone who will take responsibility for doling them out. Another thing that is sometimes done is to find a trustworthy person to entrust with secrets (e.g. your legal father isn't your biological father). One way to handle such matters is to have a safe deposit box with this kind of stuff in it and to entrust to trustee to deliver these items at appropriate times.
If you're in the U.S., then section 117 of the Copyright Act is likely what you're looking for. The U.S. Copyright Office says: Under section 117, you or someone you authorize may make a copy of an original computer program if: the new copy is being made for archival (i.e., backup) purposes only; you are the legal owner of the copy; and any copy made for archival purposes is either destroyed, or transferred with the original copy, once the original copy is sold, given away, or otherwise transferred. Based on the information you provided, it sounds like you meet all three of these criteria. They also note that your particular software's license agreement might include special conditions that affect your right to make a backup copy. Such a warning would only make sense if it was legally possible for the software distributor to make such a limitation, so I'm afraid the direct answer to your main question is "yes". It's definitely not the norm - at least in my experiences - but it is a possibility so you'll need to consult your program's license agreement. There's also a possibility that the company misunderstood you and was thinking that you were running a backup server (in the sense of a redundant infrastructure) and not making an offline backup of your entire server. It's quite normal to require an additional license for the former case.
Yes So far so good. This is a copyright violation but it is probably fair use - certainly there is case law permitting a copy of a backup digital asset to be made so I don’t see why a similar argument wouldn’t work with backing up a physical book. Clear copyright violation. Alice can rent out the original under the first sale doctrine but the ‘backup’ is not so protected. It’s not fair use because it’s use is commercial, the work is a type of work the author expects to profit from, the entire work has been copied and the use is deleterious to the market i.e. the renters are less likely to buy an original - it falls foul of all four factors of the fair use test.
If the owner of the intellectual property leaves property subject to the jurisdiction of the state of Washington, and it is determined that the owner is dead and has no heirs, then per RCW 11.08.140 it is designated escheat property. Then the following sections specify that title to the property vests in the state. The Department of Revenue has jurisdiction over that property, which has the duty to protect and conserve the property for the benefit of the permanent common school fund. There is no general answer to the question of what would best benefit the school fund. Any form of giving it away would not benefit the school fund, at least if there was an viable option for sale / licensing. There are provisions that relate to the possibility that an heir is eventually uncovered, but I will assume that no heir ever appears. Ohio law is similar. The decendant's property escheats to the state in case there is no heir. Then under ORC 2105.07, the prosecuting attorney of the county in which letters of administration are granted upon such estate shall collect and pay it over to the county treasurer. Such estate shall be applied exclusively to the support of the common schools of the county in which collected.
Bringing fair use into this sounds iffy if you are partnering -- that is a commercial relationship which should be defined. If they did send you a file with their logo for a specific purpose, you can assume that you are allowed to use it for that specific purpose. If they did not send you the file, you can assume that they did not give you permission, or they would have included the file ...
FIRST: A last will and testament does not have to be disclosed to anyone [1] prior to death. But at death, notice of the commencement of a probate proceeding which is necessary for the will to be given effect must generally be given to: (1) everyone who takes under the will, and (2) everyone who would take if either that particular version of the will were invalid and a prior will that it revokes is valid, and (3) everyone who would take if there were no valid will, and (4) creditors whose claims are accepted as valid, but are not paid due to the insolvency of the probate estate. Everyone entitled to notice of the probate of a will is entitled to see the last will and testament submitted to the court in its entirety. The case could be placed under seal to prevent people other than interested parties and their lawyers from seeing the will, but not sons of a decedent who are interested parties by definition even if they get nothing under the will, because they would take if there was no will. SECOND: This said, it is easy to make a secret transfer effective upon death via a variety of non-probate transfers such as a beneficiary designation on an account, or the provisions of a trust, that don't require a court proceedings to take effect the way that a will does (people who think that they can avoid probate by having a will are fundamentally mistaken, probate is a court proceeding necessary to give a will legal effect). Only some of these methods of making a secret gift work if the estate is subject to estate taxes which requires disclosures to be made on gift and estate tax returns of all transfers taking effect at death (something that can be circumvented by making a transfer during life that is not reportable during life because it is within some exception to gift taxation). NOTES: [1] Usually a will has to be shown to the two witnesses to a will, unless it is executed under the recently repealed Louisiana law allowing for a &quot;mystic will&quot; which has seven people witness the envelope but no one witness the will itself prior to death. Of course, holographic wills, substantially in the handwriting of the person writing them, don't have to be witnessed at all.