A LEGACY THAT HOLDS.
An estate owns whatever intellectual property the creator held at death and formally passed on through a will or applicable succession law, but informal permissions the creator gave during their lifetime do not automatically bind or benefit the estate unless documented. Heirs sharing an estate need a clear agreement on who can approve new licences, since disagreement among multiple heirs can effectively freeze a catalogue. Proof of what the estate actually owns and controls is the complete assembled record of contracts, reversions and permissions, not memory or informal understanding.
Every work, every deal and every permission the creator granted, on one record the estate can actually run.
LAST REVIEWED
THE SITUATION
An estate inherits a legacy and a paperwork problem. Contracts in folders, permissions in emails, editions in memory, and a growing queue of requests for uses the creator never lived to answer.
The estates that keep a legacy alive treat it as a working archive. Every request answered with a record, every licence with a term, every permission with a signature that lives longer than an inbox.
WHAT BREAKS.
Informal permissions with no record
Grants the creator made verbally or informally during their lifetime cannot be confirmed or denied by the estate, creating disputes with people who claim a permission was given.
Catalogue authorship gaps
Works whose authorship, creation date or edition size cannot be proven from the surviving paperwork weaken the estate's negotiating position on every future licence.
AI use of the creator's likeness or voice
An estate can face requests, or unauthorised uses, involving AI generation of new work in the creator's voice, image or style with no signed baseline to point to.
Missed publisher reversion triggers
Rights that were due to revert to the creator, and now the estate, under specific contract triggers can be missed entirely if nobody is actively tracking those dates.
Disagreement among multiple heirs
Rights split between heirs with no shared decision-making agreement can leave licensing requests unanswered for years while the parties disagree.
WHAT YOU CAN OWN.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright in the creator's works passes to the estate and eventually the heirs, typically for a fixed term after the creator's death that varies by jurisdiction.
TRADEMARK
Trademarks tied to the creator's name or brand can be inherited and maintained by the estate as a business asset.
DESIGN RIGHT
Design right may pass to the estate if it was part of the creator's original assets, but this is uncommon outside product design fields.
PATENT
Patents can technically be inherited if the creator held any, but this is rare for most creative estates.
TRADE SECRET
Trade secrets can pass to an estate but require ongoing active confidentiality measures to remain protected.
LIKENESS
Publicity and likeness rights after death vary enormously by jurisdiction, with some US states recognising them for decades and others not at all.
FOUR STEPS.
DROP
Upload the catalogue, every contract you can find and every pending request.
EXAMINE
Deed builds a working record of what is owned, what is licensed and what has been asked for.
EXECUTE
Signed licences, permission letters and heir agreements handled through one link.
DEFEND
AI use, unauthorised republishing and expired licences answered with a numbered record.
KEY FACTS
- 01Copyright term after death is typically life plus a fixed number of years, commonly 70 in the US and EU, though exact terms vary by category and country.
- 02Post-mortem publicity rights, covering use of a deceased person's name and likeness, exist in some US states but have no uniform federal or EU standard.
- 03An estate only controls what was actually owned by the creator at death, not permissions they gave informally that were never documented.
- 04A reversion clause in an old publishing or licensing contract can return rights to an estate, but only if someone actively monitors and triggers it.
- 05Multiple heirs sharing rights need an explicit agreement on decision-making, since joint ownership with no process can stall every licensing request.
QUESTIONS
+Where do we start with decades of paperwork?
With whatever you have. Deed reads what you upload, flags gaps, and lets you close them one signable link at a time.
+How do we handle AI use of the creator's voice or likeness?
Set the estate's baseline explicitly. Deed's terms block synthetic use by default and let the estate price any exception.
+What about heirs who disagree?
Deed's heir agreement records who can approve what, so licences are not held hostage to a single unreachable heir.
+How long does copyright last after the creator's death?
Commonly life plus 70 years in the US and EU, though the exact term depends on the type of work and the country, so it should be checked case by case.
+Do we need to honour a permission the creator gave verbally before they died?
There is no automatic legal obligation without documentation, but courts can sometimes infer an agreement from conduct, so recording what is known matters.