Ownership

Ownership is the state or fact of exclusive possession or control of property, which may be an object, land/real estate, intellectual property or some other kind of property.

Ownership is the key building block in the development of the capitalist socio-economic system. The concept of ownership has existed for thousands of years and in nearly all cultures. Over the millennia, however, and across cultures what is considered eligible to be property and how that property is regarded culturally is very different. Ownership is the basis for many other concepts that form the foundations of ancient and modern societies such as money, trade, debt, bankruptcy, the criminality of theft and private vs. public property.

The process and mechanics of ownership are fairly complex since 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, receive it as a gift, steal it, find it, make it or homestead it. One can transfer or lose ownership of property by selling it for money, exchanging it for other property, giving it as a gift, being robbed of it, misplacing it, or having it stripped from one's ownership through legal means such as eviction, foreclosure and seizure. Ownership is self-propagating in that if an object is owned by someone, any additional goods produced by using that object will also be owned by the same person. If one finds an object, one can legitimately take ownership of that object as long as no one claims to have previously lost that object. Some jurisdictions place time restraints on finding lost property before that property becomes fair game for anyone to claim ownership of once found. Such is the case of the gold found in the sunken SS Republic. The SS Republic steamship sank off the coast of Georgia in 1865 and lost thousands of gold coins and bars to the ocean. In 2003 Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc. discovered the ship and was awarded possession of the gold after the insurance company that had paid off damages to the original owners claimed they were the rightful owners of the gold.

What can you own?

Personal Property (objects)

Personal property is a type of property. In the common law systems personal property may also be called chattels. It is distinguished from real property, or real estate. In the civil law systems personal property is often called movable property or movables - any property that can be moved from one location or another. This term is in distinction with immovable property or immovables, such as land and buildings.

Personal property may be classified in a variety of ways, such as goods, money, negotiable instruments, securities, and intangible assets including choses in action.

Land Ownership

Real estate or immovable property is a legal term (in some jurisdictions) that encompasses land along with anything permanently affixed to the land, such as buildings. Real estate (immovable property) is often considered synonymous with real property (also sometimes called realty), in contrast with personal property (also sometimes called chattel or personalty). However, for technical purposes, some people prefer to distinguish real estate, referring to the land and fixtures themselves, from real property, referring to ownership rights over real estate. The terms real estate and real property are used primarily in common law, while civil law jurisdictions refer instead to immovable property.

In spite of the name, real estate has no connection with the concept of reality (in other words, the law does not consider real property more "real" than personal property). It derives instead from the feudal principle that in a monarchy, all land was considered the property of the king. Thus originally the term real estate was equivalent to "royal estate", real originating from the French royale, as it was the French-speaking Normans who introduced feudalism to England and thus to the English language; cognate to Spanish real.

With the development of private property ownership, real estate has become a major area of business.

Corporations and Legal Entities

An individual or group of individuals can own corporations and other legal entities. A legal entity is a legal construct through which the law allows a group of natural persons to act as if it were an individual for certain purposes. Some companies and entities are owned privately by the individuals who registered them with the government while other companies are owned publicly.

A public company is a company owned by any member of the public who wishes to purchase stock in that company rather than by a relatively few individuals. A company that is owned by stockholders who are members of the general public and trade shares publicly, often through a listing on a stock exchange. Ownership is open to anyone who has the money and inclination to buy shares in the company. It is differentiated from privately held companies where the shares are held by a small group of individuals often members of one or a small group of families or otherwise related individuals (or other companies). For a discussion of the British and Irish variant of this type of company, see public limited company.

Intellectual Property

Intellectual (IP) property refers to a legal entitlement which sometimes attaches to the expressed form of an idea, or to some other intangible subject matter. This legal entitlement generally enables its holder to exercise exclusive rights of use in relation to the subject matter of the IP. The term intellectual property reflects the idea that this subject matter is the product of the mind or the intellect, and that IP rights may be protected at law in the same way as any other form of property.

Intellectual property laws confer a bundle of exclusive rights 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). It is therefore important to note that 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.

copyright may subsist in creative and artistic works (eg. books, movies, music, paintings, photographs and software), giving a copyright holder the exclusive right to control reproduction or adaptation of such works for a certain period of time.
A patent may be granted in relation to an invention that is new, useful and not simply an obvious advancement over what exisited when the application was filed. A patent gives the holder an exclusive right to commercially exploit the invention for a certain period of time (typically 20 years from the filing date of a patent application).
A trademark is a distinctive sign which is used to distinguish the products or services of one business from those of another business.
An industrial design right protects the form of appearance, style or design of an industrial object (eg. spare parts, furniture or textiles).
A trade secret (also known as "confidential information") is an item of confidential information concerning the commercial practices or proprietary knowledge of a business.

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 (with or without consideration) or licensed to third parties. In some jurisdictions it may also be possible to use intellectual property as security 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 authors 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 and business methods. Manifestations of this controversy can be seen in the way different jurisdictions decide whether to grant intellectual property protection in relation to subject matter of this kind, and the North-South divide on issues of the role and scope of intellectual property laws.

Chattel Slavery

The living human body is, in most modern societies, considered something which cannot be the property of anyone but the person whose body it is. This is in contradistinction to chattel slavery. Chattel slavery is a type of slavery defined as the absolute legal ownership of a person or persons, including the legal right to buy and sell them. The slaves do not have the freedom to live life as they choose, but as they are instructed by their owners. In most countries, chattel slaves are considered as movable property. Slavery almost always occurs for the purpose of securing the labour of the slave.

Slavery is currently illegal in every country around the world, however, up until the 19th century slavery and ownership of people had existed in one form or another in nearly every society on earth.

CorpSpeak

While several corporate gurus have promoted the use of the term "ownership" in regards to responsibility for corporate tasks, this is grammatically incorrect. You cannot own responsibility. You may be able to subcontract to transfer responsibility to or from someone, but this may be frowned on in the corporate environment in which this grammatic atrocity is being promoted.

Who Can Own Property?

Personal Ownership

In Western societies both men and women can own property, however, in some societies only adult men may own property. In other societies (such as the Haudenosaunee), property is matrilinear and passed on from mother to daughter. anybody can own a slave

Ownership by Corporations and Legal Entities

Legal entities, such as corporations, trusts, partnerships, religions, and nations (or governments) can own property in various societies past and present. Although corporations and other legal entities are owned or controled by individuals or groups of individuals they are allowed to own their own property just as natural people are able to. The advantage in placing the ownership of an asset in the name of an entity is that the asset is protected from law suits against the owner of the entity. If the owner of the entity is personally sued the asset cannot be taken in the law suit.

When there is risk involved in the ownership of an asset as in the case of investment real estate the ownership of that asset is often made in the name of a corporate entity. Real estate property investors often form a corporation or other entity for the sole purpose of purchasing a single building. Rather than buying the building in the investor's personal name the investor will place the corporations' name on the deed. Since the corporation is a separate entity in the eyes of the law if a tenant is hurt on the premises and sues the owner of the building they are suing the corporation and not the investor. This protects the investor from losing many properties from one law suit.

Communal Ownership

Communal ownership of property occurs when a group of people share the ownership of property amongst each other. Any and every member of the group is free to use the property when they want but also those individuals agree to allow all others in the group to use the property when that person wants. Although communal ownership of property is not as widespread as individual ownership of property both forms of ownership exist in most societies. In America, for example, national parks and publicly owned buildings such as libraries are communally owned by all Americans. In an ideal communist nation the means of production of goods would be owned communally by all people of that nation.

One criticism of the concept of communal ownership is the Tragedy of the Commons where unrestricted access to a resource such as a pasture ultimately dooms the resource because of over-exploitation. This occurs because the benefits of exploitation accrue to individuals, while the costs of exploitation are distributed between all those exploiting the resource.

Social Stigmas

In modern Western popular culture some people (principally among the political left) believe that exclusive ownership of property underlies much social injustice, and facilitates tyranny and oppression on an individual and societal scale. Others consider the striving to achieve greater ownership of wealth as the driving factor behind human technological advancement and increasing standards of living.

Ownership Society

Ownership society is a slogan for a model of society promoted by United States President George W. Bush. It takes as lead values personal responsibility, economic liberty, and the owning of property. The ownership society discussed by Bush also extends to certain proposals of specific models of health care and social security. Critics have claimed that Bush's agenda for an ownership society also includes extending tax cuts, allowing wealthy Americans to shelter income from tax, and using the tax code to curtail the government's role in health care and retirement saving. Some say that the ultimate purpose of these proposals is the abolition of the graduated income tax, a progressive tax, and its replacement with a structurally simpler flat tax.

Societies Supposedly Without Ownership

Some societies, notably some Native American ones, appeared to exist without the concept of personal ownership. Members of a society would feel free to take any objects they had need of, and expect them to be taken by others. When these societies were encountered by European settlers they behaved in their usual way, which led to the Europeans regarding the natives as thieves.

Thus, when the native Americans sold Manhattan to European settlers for an insignificant sum, the natives assumed everyone would continue to be allowed to use the land. They couldn't conceive of a European immigrant evicting a native. So the natives thought they were actually getting a good deal.

Recently, however, researchers have started to question just how collectivist Native American societies really were. Citing earlier studies done by anthropologists and historians "who were able to interview tribal members who had lived in pre-reservation Indian society", they argue that in fact, "most if not all North American indigenous peoples had a strong belief in individual property rights and ownership." ^* These researchers further assert that Native American collectivism is a myth originating from the first encounters with tribes who, because of their hunting-orientation "did not view land as an important asset", and indeed, did not have a private property system with regards to land. The collectivist myth was initally propagated by reporters and politicians who never actually had contact with Native Americans and then made into a reality by the collectivist property rights system forced on Indians by the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act.

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