Who owns the asteroid/meteoroid? This is a question I’ve been thinking about but I have no law experience so I wanted to ask it here. Suppose an high valued (suppose billions of dollars) asteroid/meteorite falls and lands on the earth. The question is: who gets to claim ownership of it? Scenario 1: It lands in John Smiths yard. Is it now John Smiths? Or does it belong to the government that John Smith belongs to? Scenario 2: It lands in international waters. Is it a free for all? Scenario 3: It lands on one of the poles. Same as 2?
National territory It depends on the nation. Some countries or jurisdictions have specific laws about meteorites, like the Western Australia Museum Act 1969, ss. 43-45, which provides that meteorites are Crown property (there are many meteorites in the Nullarbor Plain). Absent any specific rule like this, meteorites are likely to be treated in any of the following ways - It's a rock. Mineral rights (which often go along with ownership of the land in general, but can be separately assigned) may apply to meteorites on the grounds (haha) that they are rocks which can be treated as part of the land on which they fell. There may be special law vesting certain kinds of mineral finds in the State, should you be dealing with a meteorite made of gold, for example. Mineral law is a specialist topic even within national law, so the exact answer here may depend on a lot of factors - what the thing is made of, whether it's above ground or not, etc. - but the probable starting point is that rocks from space are no different in law from the rocks that were already there. It's an object that has no clear owner. There are longstanding principles for &quot;unowned things&quot; in civil and common law systems, typically applying to wild animals or other things that are naturally occurring and not part of the land as such. If a meteorite is &quot;res nullius&quot; in this sense, then it might belong to the finder or to the landowner, depending on exactly which flavor of legal tradition is followed. It's a valuable find. There are similar rules about &quot;treasure trove&quot;, for example in the United Kingdom which gives rights to the Crown. But a meteorite would not be classed as treasure in the UK, because it is an &quot;unworked natural object&quot;. Other jurisdictions might draw these boundaries differently. It's an object of scientific importance. A meteorite might be classed as &quot;cultural property&quot; within the meaning of the U.N. Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property 1970 , as transposed into local law. The Convention covers &quot;rare collections and specimens of [...] minerals&quot;, and objects of paleontological or archaeological interest. This could affect somebody's ability to export or destroy the object (for the latter, see also the 2003 UNESCO Declaration which includes &quot;cultural heritage linked to a natural site&quot;). National law might contain its own similar provisions. International waters and the poles The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982, Part XI governs mineral exploitation in &quot;the Area&quot;, meaning the part of the seabed that does not belong to any nation. Activities of this kind are meant to be under the auspices of the International Seabed Authority, which has copious rules about application and approval, navigation, environmental controls, and so on - subject to the Convention principle of treating the seabed as &quot;the common heritage of mankind&quot;. This Area includes the North Pole. The South Pole is part of the area covered by the Environmental Protocol to the Antarctic Treaty, 1991, which provides in its Article 7 that Any activity relating to mineral resources, other than scientific research, shall be prohibited. In practice, as in international law generally, States might do all sorts of other things. But this is the broad legal position. It might be that States would agree a special regime applicable to the totally unprecedented circumstances, or that it would be a free-for-all. Again, I'm assuming that the applicable principles for digging up a space rock for commercial purposes are the same as for other kinds of rock. There is international law about space rocks when they are in space, and about human-made objects when they crash down to Earth, but seemingly no special provision for meteorites.
Once you have left the hair on the hairdresser's floor, it is no longer your property. They can do what they like with it. In your first two scenarios, you are doing nothing to modify the assumption that you have discarded the hair - you're just letting the hairdresser deal with it. In the third scenario, you are asserting that the hair is still yours; you could gather it up. Similarly, if you had left an empty soda can on a cafe table, the cafe is entitled to assume that you don't want it any longer. They could put it in the recycling bin, or make it into a delightful sculpture, or whatever. If you stop them clearing the table, and say &quot;actually, I'd like to keep that can&quot; - then it's still yours. If you abandon it and walk away, it's not yours. The interpretation of whether you have &quot;discarded&quot; the thing is contextual. There are several possible legal theories about exactly what is going on when you leave objects lying around and wander away. These include the classical Roman view of res derelictae, that the thing becomes ownerless as soon as you physically abandon it with the intention of doing so - and conversely, views such as that of Sir Frederick Pollock, who considered it a &quot;high, grave and dubious question&quot; whether something stops being your property even after you throw it away while declaring that you want to get rid of it. But Pollock would allow that you had transferred ownership of the cut hair to the hairdresser, if only by silently acquiescing to them sweeping it up, rather than because they had claimed an ownerless substance. Either way, the hair is no longer your own, and once it is not yours its fate is not your concern. If you had some agreement with the hairdresser about what would happen, that's another matter, but the default position is that once the hair is theirs, they get to decide what happens with it. The late astronaut Neil Armstrong found out his barber was selling his cut hair as souvenirs. The letter from his lawyer asks for the return of the hair, or payment of a charitable donation, on the special basis of an Ohio law protecting celebrity rights in their 'persona'. It does not assert that Armstrong had any continued property right in the hair itself. The hair samples are still for sale, by the way. Even though your cut hair came from your body, it is not a human tissue to which special rules may apply. Hair is made of keratin and is not cellular, so nothing in the European Tissues and Cells Directive, applicable to Slovakia as an EU member, will kick in regarding your consent. Equally, this is surely not a &quot;wrongful taking of organs, tissues [or] cells&quot; under the Slovakian Criminal Code, sections 159-160. You may feel attached to it, in a continuing emotional sense, despite the result of the scissors: but it is not treated as specially as your actual flesh in terms of consent to what happens after it's removed. Also in EU law, the Waste Framework Directive covers &quot;waste&quot;, by definition, &quot;any substance or object which the holder discards or intends or is required to discard&quot;. Although there is no coding in the European Waste Catalogue for human hair, it's classed as B3070 in the Basel Convention, an example of a B3 non-hazardous organic waste; Slovakia is one of the parties to this agreement. The substance of the Directive, as implemented in local law, would affect the onward destiny of the hair - such as which bin the hairdresser could put it in for collection, how it may be recycled into another product, or treated as a by-product instead of waste as such. There is a large and confusing case law about all that. Thankfully for you, it is the hairdresser who would have to deal with the implications.
Maybe, Hence the Lawsuits In the absence of clear statute law these all circle around tort law. For the scooter companies, trespass to chattels, and for the affected landowners (who hire the removalists) trespass to land and nuisance seem applicable. In essence, I can’t take your stuff (trespass to chattels) but you can’t leave your stuff on my property (trespass to land) or impeding access to it (nuisance). If you do, I am entitled to the reasonable costs of dealing with it. Note that, as owner, you remain responsible for you stuff even if you rented it to someone else. Both sides are pushing hard into unexplored areas of law so we await the judgement with interest. Then we’ll know.
I can't see anything to say this is a state-wide ban. Do they have to give an opportunity to return unused fireworks for a refund? The ban imposed by Portland Fire and Rescue appears to relate to the use, not possession, of fireworks so I assume that the stores' / State's regular refund policies would apply. Due to unusually hot temperatures and dry conditions, PF&amp;R is announcing an immediate ban on the use of all legal and illegal fireworks...
There is a subtle difference between NSF policy and enforceable obligation. The primary stick that goes with the carrot is being excluded from future funding. Current policy does not generally force material in the public domain, but it is a possibility in "exceptional circumstances". There no doubt is a paper record somewhere in D.C. indicating whether such a codicil was added to any of these grants. NSF generally does not have contracts with individuals, they have contracts with institutions who have relations (typically employer-employee) with individuals, so even if there were a policy requiring works to be put in the public domain, NSF would have to go after the institution, who would have to go after the author. Since that would conflict with longstanding NSF policy on copyright, it is unlikely that they would want to pursue such an approach. The statement that McGraw-Hill Book Company announces that the material, which is copyrighted, will be available for use by authors and publishers on a royalty-free basis on or after April 30, 1970 is not itself a license, it is a suggestion that a license will com into existence. A present-tense declaration "this work is dedicated to the public domain effective April 30, 1970" can be interpreted as a license effective of a date certain. Similarly, "will be available to all publishers for use in English after December 31, 1970, and in translations after December 31, 1975" does not say that it is in the public domain effective of some date. One might say that the copyright statement is simply not well written and the author really intended the books to be in the public domain as of those dates. But without compelling evidence that the book was actually released into the public domain, a court is very unlikely to abrogate a person's property rights.
Not that I am aware of. A person who 'owns' a domain is entitled to utilize that domain including for the purposes of receiving emails. With physical mail, it is a crime in most countries to intentionally interfere with mail that is not addressed to you. For example - Australia. However, this is statute law and as such does not extend to emails - even if it did, if you own the domain then you are the person to whom it was addressed. I note that you seem to misunderstand "confidential" - this only arises in the context of a special relationship between the person transmitting the information and the person receiving it. Usually this is a contractual obligation between A and B but it can be imposed by law (e.g. doctor-patient, banker-client, lawyer-client, GDPR etc.). If A sends confidential (as between A &amp; B) information to C, C is under no general obligation to keep it confidential if C has no relationship of confidentiality with A or B. If C discloses it and B suffers damage, B sues A for breach of confidence (or the government prosecutes A for breaking the law); B has no case against C. For your situation, where B has allowed A to send the information to an obsolete address then B has contributed to the breach to an extent that B would be extremely unlikely to succeed in a suit against A.
The situation is that Executive Order 2020-33 is no more, and a new order, 2020-68 exists. The old orders to stay home are now copied under this order, but it may be necessary for her to re-issue (a subset of) the orders so that they are pursuant to #68 and not #33 (live by the technicality, die by the technicality). If she does not do that quickly, I expect there to be legal challenges. The law (30-403) doesn't say that orders issued pursuant to a declaration of a state of disaster expire when the authorizing declaration expires, but one can reasonably infer that that is what the legislature had in mind when this law was passed. But that is a matter for the courts to decide. Deference to the executive, which is the usual way that courts operate, would favor an interpretation where saying "All previous orders that rested on Executive Order 2020-33 now rest on this order" counts as re-issuing the same orders with a new number in the text. The law does not say that the circumstances authorizing an emergency order have to be completely different. Perhaps the legislature will revise the law in the future, but it is what it is right now.
First Sale Doctrine One of the rights a copyright holder has is an exclusive right &quot;to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending&quot;. 17 U.S.C. 106(3). This is distinct from the reproduction right they have to make copies or derivative works. So, absent a licence, you can neither make the model nor distribute the model. If you are operating under a licence, that is a legally binding contract between you and the copyright holder. If it says that you cannot give away models, then doing so is a breach of that contract and a breach of copyright for which you could be sued. However, if you did sell or give away the model to a third party, that would be a lawful transfer of title in the object itself, even though it is a breach of contract. An innocent third party (i.e. one who has no knowledge of the breach) would be a lawful owner and could do what they liked with the object and, under the first-sale doctrine, is not bound by the licence. If you were to die, the executor or administrator of your estate would be bound by the terms of the licence (whether they knew about them or not), and if they breached them, they would be liable for that breach. If done in good faith, they could seek indemnity from the estate, but if the estate has insufficient funds or has been finalised, they would be personally liable. This is largely theoretical as the copyright owner would have to pursue their claim so promptly that unless they were actively monitoring the death notices for anyone who ever downloaded their model, they would miss their chance. A third party who received the physical model from the estate, either by buying it or being given it as a beneficiary, would own it and have first-sale doctrine rights. Although originally a US concept (Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus 1908), it is my understanding that the first-sale doctrine has since spread to all common-law countries. The last was Australia in Calidad v Seiko Epson [2020] HCA 41. ... the public ... The above analysis presumes that the people you are gifting the models to are &quot;the public&quot;. This may not be the case where the models are distributed to a small circle of people like family and friends. In that case, there is no general right of distribution, and the copyright owner would need to rely on their right of reproduction. That is, in making the copy in order to give the object away, you breached the licence. This becomes problematic when your decision to give away the object happens later, possibly years later, possibly after you're dead. So, it might not be a problem for the executor or administrator to distribute the object to a beneficiary, but it might be a problem to sell it at a deceased-estate auction. The former is not distribution to &quot;the public&quot;; the latter is.