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I believe you'll find, upon further research, that in the US (in any case) It's not so much the "rights" as the copyright that is in question. If a work goes out of copyright, and no one is the heir to the estate, then (according to the silly life plus 70 years thing) - or so lawyers have told me - no one can publish the work. It has no copyright, and there is no one with a valid claim to establish a new copyright - though, of course, if you could find an office in the "state" who was willing to give it a shot, precedent might be set. I doubt the state would do that for free, though, and what is most likely is that some really high price, or percentage would be set by a government office with no idea the actual worth - or lack thereof - and the project would die.
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