Action star Bruce Willis may be gearing up to take Apple to court to fight for the ownership rights of his massive digital music collection. The A-lister wants to leave his collection to his daughters after he dies, but Apple’s fine print prohibits the sharing of music bought from its online store.

The Die Hard actor, 57, wants to leave his extensive music collection to his three daughters, Rumer, Scout and Tallulah, after his death. However, under Apple’s terms and conditions customers who purchase music from iTunes are actually only “borrowing” the tracks, and don’t own them outright. Essentially, it means that when an owner passes away his/her music collection becomes worthless.

Lots of people will be surprised on learning all those tracks and books they have bought over the years don’t actually belong to them. It’s only natural you would want to pass them on to a loved one. The law will catch up, but ideally Apple and the like will update their policies and work out the best solution for their customers, said Chris Walton, an estate specialist at Irwin Mitchell.

Willis is looking for ways to legitimately pass on the music to his daughters and so far he seems to have a choice of two avenues that he can pursue. On one hand, it has been reported that his legal team is exploring the possibility of setting up “family trusts” which will act as the legal holders of the music. It has also been rumoured that he may choose to support and join legal action, currently underway in five U.S. States, seeking to give customers more rights to share digital music that they have legally purchased.

Apple has considerable power in this particular arena and has no problem flexing its copyright muscle.

It can freeze the iTunes accounts of those it believes are passing on music to others and forbids the transfer of songs to MP3 players other than its own iPods.

How matters will progress from this point forward is unclear, however it has been reported that Willis has no qualms about taking the tech giant to court.

[Source: The Sun, The Guardian, Daily Mail]