Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
If a court rules that "non transferable licence" arrangement can't be enforced, then yes, it could, in which case the state would do what it always does in such situations, and sell it off (usually by auction).
|
IANAL but it strikes me that the only thing that creates any "property" in the first place is the license. If a court were to rule that the "non transferable" status of the license did not apply then we'd revert to the default case which is general copyright applies, which means that the potential inheritor has no more rights than fair use/fair dealing etc would confer. Which is the same as anyone else, so they wouldn't "inherit" anything specific.
This is distinct from inheriting a physical object which happens to contain the information for a copyrighted work and where one does not need to copy it in order to use it. We can debate that last point when it comes to DVDs and CDs but it's fairly well established that the implied license to use the content is transferred with the object.
That would seem to me to be the logical out working of copyright law as I understand it but again IANAL.