Roderick Ramage discusses the property characteristics of “e-material” & shares a new precedent
Computer hardware is a personal chattel as defined in the Administration of Estates Act 1925, s 55(2)(x) as altered from 1 October 2014 by the Inheritance and Trustees’ Powers Act 2014, but not if used by the deceased solely or mainly for business purposes. The physical devices (memory sticks, CDs, floppy discs, external hard discs etc) are capable also of being personal chattels, again subject to the business test. The programs and all data files (documents, images, sound etc), even if stored on a computer or a device which is a personal chattel, cannot be personal chattels, because they are not tangible property. The programs accessed in the cloud (almost certainly) and the data placed in the cloud files (quite possibly but still unsettled) are not the property of the person who uses them and, in the case of data files placed them there; see work by Queen Mary University of London. Therefore, the property characteristics of “e-material” are not altogether clear
