Intellectual Property

I have a software package for personal medical records. We are selling it in the USA and now have a group in Ireland that wants a license to sell it in Europe. Do we need a patent, copyright, or trademark to protect our product?

If a patent license agreement has no stipulation or reference at all as to the Licensor's ability to transfer or assign the agreement, can the Licensor assign the agreement to a third party without the Licensee's approval and notification? Specifically, as an individual I hold a patent license agreement and I recently formed an LLC in which I am the sole owner. I would like to transfer or assign the patent license agreement to my LLC.

I am a freelance writer trying to help the sister of a deceased person get that person's memoirs published. This will not be a commercial transaction, although some royalties may accrue if the memoir is published. The deceased person left her estate in trust to twelve heirs, so we assume the intellectual property rights in the memoirs also belong to those heirs. Eleven of the twelve heirs have agreed, in writing, to having the memoirs published, with the Trust receiving the royalties, if any. The twelfth heir has not responded to e-mails, letters or telephone calls and presumably cannot be reached. Are we required to have the approval of the twelfth heir? Or can we proceed in the absence of her response, on the assumption that 'no response' is not a negative response? An important point, I believe, is that the financial interest of the twelfth heir will not be damaged in any way, since any royalties coming into the trust will be shared among all twelve heirs. She would have no basis to claim that she had been damaged, if the memoir is published in the absence of her assent.