Cheng Yi, a judge specializing in inheritance cases with Beijing Chao-yang District People's Court, says the Taobao experiment is an innovation in property transfer or purchase.

"It is important to have proper inheritance laws for online shops as such disputes have been increasing.

"This is a kind of test model on how e-property inheritance works. After all, e-property can be defined as property, and online shop owners die and have accidents. This is a good effort, and what it reveals will be worthwhile."

The transfer of online property needs to be strictly supervised to ensure it complies with company rules and the law, she says.

Apart from Taobao, no other large websites have established rules or made any attempt to clarify the matter of virtual property inheritance.

Sina, one of China's largest Internet companies, say it has no rules on giving relatives access to a deceased person's mailbox and micro blog users.

The company's registration agreement says mailbox users and micro-bloggers cannot transfer their accounts to anyone else.

The regulations of Sina Weibo, Chinese largest twitter-like service, say online accounts are deleted if they are unused for more than 90 days, except for celebrities and people with great social standing.

"Inheritance is a vexed issue for us," says a Sina employee, on condition of anonymity.

"There are no laws on e-property or e-account purchase and transformation. This limits what we can do."

Cheng says: "E-accounts, including micro blog and e-mail, include private information. That means they aren't easy to transfer. Legally, it is inappropriate to do so."

caoyin@chinadaily.com.cn