Donate your intellectual property in case of death | Hacker News Reader

Donate your intellectual property in case of death

evan-roth.com

12 pointsshard9 comments

I don't really want to sign that. I'd need a way to make exceptions.

Let's say that I'm working on a startup that hasn't become a company yet with someone when I die. I'm not sure exactly how the IP legalities work, but I assume that he would be able to keep working on it, possibly under the condition that he give some of gains to my heirs.

But if my half of the IP enters into the public domain, my cofounder would lose his cofounder and at least have questions of whether much of the work we had done to that point had to be released.

Plus, I really don't want anyone to have incentive to kill me because they want that great book I wrote or that great piece of proprietary software that I developed and own to enter the public domain.

The "way to make exceptions" is to incorporate your startup and sign an IP agreement with it.

I think the old fashioned way - a will - can cover it as well.

Yeah, but what if we haven't gotten there yet? What if it was a side-project that we now know will turn into a startup but hasn't gotten to the stage of incorporation?

I may not say, "Oh, yeah, 20 years ago I signed something putting all my IP in the public domain if I die. We should incorporate now just in case something happens to me." I may not remember, especially if I'm hacking 12 hrs/day on the startup.

May I suggest you to change "IP" in the title to "Intellectual Property"? It is a nice initiative, but the title is a bit cryptic and may get ignored

I thought the article was going to be akin to "My Death Page", but that you have an permanent IP pointing towards web space for "hedge stone".

This is great idea but I'm not sure that this implementation is really going to work.

Isn't this a bit meaningless unless we have some sort of repository?

Donate your IP in case you're murdered.

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