A Mr. Wang of Donghai County in Lianyungang, this month became the first person in his city to inherit an online shop.
The shop, which had been fully authenticated and was run in his mother’s name, continued to be a lucrative business after she died. Thus, Wang decided to keep it running; that was until he failed to authenticate the shop using Taobao’s “face authentication” software.
Unable to identify himself, the shop would have been forced to close. As a way of keeping it going, Wang was advised by Taobao.com to follow its “inheritance procedure” with his local notary office.
According to Sang Honghua, Director of the Lianyungang City Notary Office, this is the first case of its kind; “Online virtual property is considered transferrable property and ought to be inheritable in the legal sense. Online shops are the result of lawful operation of shop owners, and can bring actual benefits to obligees, as with intellectual property”, Honghua told JSChina.
In September 2017, Shanghai operator Ms. Zhao also ran a Taobao shop that was registered in her mother’s name. Ms Zhao wished to transfer the shop over to her father’s name after her mother died. As Alibaba requires notarisations for this, she went to her local notary office in Shanghai, whom refused to notarise her statement “because her online property is virtual, not real”.
The General Rules of Civil Law says judicial departments should abide by the law when it comes to the protection of digital and network virtual property. In other words, the protection of people’s online property is recognised by the law as civil rights, even though there is no specific law on it, reported China Daily.
