Recent content by 1935

Ah, that is invaluable---thank you!

So the next question becomes figuring out the proper way to settle the "estate". In Tennessee we have a thing that lets an affidavit of small estate be filed instead of the full probate probate process (if the total value is less than $50,000). I suppose they could do that to settle it. But...

I think in Tennessee it’s divided between the wife and two children. They all three want to transfer copyright to a third party. That link is very helpful—still seems confusing to me though as far as when it mentions by ”EITHER in writing OR by operation of law”. They don’t want to go...

Correct—I just used “grandma” as an example in the other thread to try to keep it relevant to the OP’s question there. But when I realized the situation I’m dealing with wasn’t as similar to that one as I thought is when I knew I should create a new thread. (I should have done that to start...

I didn’t want to further hijack that other thread (didn’t mean to in the first place) so that’s why I started this one. His estate wasn’t probated, since all the real property was in the wife’s name, and the only thing actually in the estate would be the [unregistered] copyright. (The wife...

In Tennessee, if a person has an unregistered copyright, and they pass away intestate (with heirs - wife and kids), what must be done to transfer the copyright? USC Title 17 Chapter 2 §204 says: (a) A transfer of copyright ownership, other than by operation of law, is not valid unless an...

My questions were actually for a similar situation where the details of the copyright are known (it's unregistered) and the person was intestate, and all real property (house, car, bank account, etc.) was jointly owned, so the family didn't plan on probating anything. I probably should start a...

I guess what I'm really asking is do the heirs already hold the copyright (in the same way as if Grandma had sold to a third party during her lifetime), or is there something that has to be done by a court to explicitly give the heirs the copyright, before they would then be able to sign those...

Thanks Quincy. But Grandma is deceased, so who handles the transfer now? Is it simply a matter of the heirs signing over rights that they automatically received (either through a will or through intestate succession laws) and that's it, or must a probate court be involved? I assume probate would...

The question remaining is, assuming the copyright is unregistered, does a transfer of it have to go through probate, or is a written assignment from the heirs sufficient? Say for example, all of the heirs agreed that one grandchild should publish the book and register the copyright and he/she...