Ownership is the state or fact of legal possession and control over property, which may be any asset, Tangible asset or Intangible asset. Ownership can involve multiple rights, collectively referred to as title, which may be separated and held by different parties.
The process and mechanics of ownership are fairly complex: one can gain, transfer, and lose ownership of property in a number of ways. To acquire property one can purchase it with money, trade it for other property, win it in a bet, receive it as a gift, inheritance it, find it, receive it as damages, earn it by doing work or performing services, Manufacturing it, or homestead it. One can transfer or lose ownership of property by Sales it for money, Trade it for other property, giving it as a gift, misplacing it, or having it stripped from one's ownership through legal means such as eviction, foreclosure, seizure, or Eminent domain. Ownership implies that the owner of a property also owns any economic benefits or deficits associated with the property.
To own and operate property, structures (often known today as legal person) have been created in many societies throughout history. The differences in how they deal with members' rights is a key factor in determining their type. Each type has advantages and disadvantages derived from their means of recognizing or disregarding (rewarding or not) contributions of financial capital or personal effort.
, , Trust law, , and condominium associations are only some of the many varied types of structured ownership; each type has many subtypes. Legal advantages or restrictions on various types of structured ownership have existed in many societies past and present. To govern how assets are to be used, shared, or treated, rules and regulations may be legally imposed or internally adopted or decreed.
In the loosest sense of group ownership, a lack of legal framework, rules and regulations may mean that group ownership of property places each member in a position of responsibility (liability) for the actions of every other member. A structured group duly constituted as an entity under law may still not protect members from being personally liable for each other's actions. Court decisions against the entity itself may give rise to unlimited personal liability for each and every member. An example of this situation is a professional partnership (e.g. law practice) in some . Thus, being a partner or owner in a group may give little advantage in terms of share ownership while producing a lot of risk to the partner, owner or participant.
Entities with a member focus will give financial surplus back to members according to the volume of financial activity that the participating member generated for the entity. Examples of this are producer cooperatives, buyer cooperatives and participating whole life policyholders in both mutual and Share capital insurance companies.
Entities with shared voting rights that depend on financial capital distribute surplus among shareholders without regard to any other contribution to the entity. Depending on internal rules and regulations, certain classes of shares have the right to receive increases in financial "dividends" while other classes do not. After many years the increase over time is substantial if the business is profitable. Examples of this are common shares and preferred shares in private or publicly listed share capital corporations.
Entities with a focus on providing service in perpetuam do not distribute financial surplus; they must retain it. It will then serve as a cushion against losses or as a means to finance growth activities. Examples of this are not-for-profit entities: they are allowed to make profits, but are not permitted to give any of it back to members except by way of discounts in the future on new transactions.
Depending on the charter at the foundation of the entity, and depending on the legal framework under which the entity was created, the form of ownership is determined once and for all time. To change it requires significant work in terms of communicating with stakeholders (member-owners, governments, etc.) and acquiring their approval. Whatever structural constraints or disadvantages exist at the creation thus remain an integral part of the entity. Common in, for instance, New York City, Hamburg, and Berlin is a form of real estate ownership known as a cooperative (also co-operative or co-op, in Germany Wohnungsgenossenschaft – apartment co-operative, also " Wohnbaugenossenschaft" or simply " Baugenossenschaft") which relies heavily on internal rules of operation instead of the legal framework governing condominium associations. These "co-ops", owning the building for the mutual benefit of its members, can ultimately perform most of the functions of a legally constituted condominium, i.e. restricting use appropriately and containing financial liabilities to within tolerable levels. To change their structure now that they are up and operating would require significant effort to achieve acceptance among members and various levels of government.
One disadvantage of communal ownership, known as the Tragedy of the Commons, occurs where unlimited unrestricted and unregulated access to a resource (e.g. pasture land) destroys the resource because of over-exploitation. The benefits of exploitation accrue to individuals immediately, while the costs of policing or enforcing appropriate use, and the losses dues to over exploitation, are distributed among many, and are only visible to these gradually.
In a communist nation, the means of production of goods would be owned communally by all people of that nation; the original thinkers did not specify rules and regulations.
Personal property may be classified in a variety of ways, such as goods, money, negotiable instruments, securities, and including choses in action.
In law, the word real means relating to a thing (from Latin reālis, ultimately from rēs, 'matter' or 'thing'), as distinguished from a person. Thus the law broadly distinguishes between real property (land and anything affixed to it) and personal property (everything else, e.g., clothing, furniture, money). The conceptual difference is between immovable property, which would transfer title along with the land, and movable property, which a person would retain title to.
With the development of private property ownership, real estate has become a major area of business.
Some duly incorporated entities may not be owned by individuals nor by other entities; they exist without being owned once they are created. Not being owned, they cannot be bought and sold. Mutual life insurance companies, , foundations and , not for profit organizations, and public corporations are examples of this. No person can purchase the company, as their ownership is not legally available for sale, neither as shares nor as a single whole.
Intellectual property confer a bundle of in relation to the particular form or manner in which ideas or information are expressed or manifested, and not in relation to the ideas or concepts themselves (see idea-expression divide). The term "intellectual property" denotes the specific legal rights which authors, inventors and other IP holders may hold and exercise, and not the intellectual work itself.
Intellectual property laws are designed to protect different forms of intangible subject matter, although in some cases there is a degree of overlap.
Patents, trademarks and designs fall into a particular subset of intellectual property known as industrial property.
Like other forms of property, intellectual property (or rather the exclusive rights which subsist in the IP) can be transferred (consideration or gift consideration) or to third parties. In some it is possible to use intellectual property as collateral for a loan.
The basic public policy rationale for the protection of intellectual property is that IP laws facilitate and encourage disclosure of innovation into the public domain for the common good, by granting and inventors exclusive rights to exploit their works and invention for a limited period.
However, various schools of thought are critical of the very concept of intellectual property, and some characterise IP as intellectual protectionism. There is ongoing debate as to whether IP laws truly operate to confer the stated public benefits, and whether the protection they are said to provide is appropriate in the context of innovation derived from such things as traditional knowledge and folklore, and patents for software patent and business methods. Manifestations of this controversy can be seen in the way different decide whether to grant intellectual property protection in relation to subject matter of this kind, and the stark divide on issues of the role and scope of intellectual property laws.
The living human body is, in modern societies, considered something which cannot be the property of anyone but the person whose body it is. Its opposite, in which the person in the body does not own their body, is slavery. Chattel slavery was defined as the absolute legal ownership of a person, including the legal right to buy and sell them. Persons who were so enslaved did not have the freedom to direct their own actions, and their legal rights were either severely limited or nonexistent. The Antebellum period in the United States is considered both the worst for the exploitation of chattel slaves, and also where the practice aroused such fierce opposition and support that it led to the American Civil War.
Chattel slavery is currently (2020) illegal in every country in the world. However, until the 19th century slavery in one form or another existed in most societies and was thought of as the normal state of things; slaves of whatever ethnicity were considered racially inferior. Notwithstanding the illegality of enslavement, virtual slavery still exists in various forms today, although called by other names. "Slavery Today". BBC.
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