Ownership

Ownership is the state or fact of legal possession and control over property, which may be any asset, tangible or intangible. 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

benefits or deficits associated with the property.

History

Over the

Types of owners

In person

Structured ownership entities

Throughout history, nations (or governments) and religious organizations have owned property. These entities exist primarily for purposes other than to own or operate property; hence, they may have no clear rules regarding the disposition of their property.

To own and operate property, structures (often known today as legal entities) 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.

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.

Liability for the group or for others in the group

Ownership by definition does not necessarily imply a responsibility to others for actions regarding the property. A "legal shield" is said to exist if the entity's legal liabilities do not get redistributed among the entity's owners or members. An application of this, to limit ownership risks, is to form a new entity (such as a shell company) to purchase, own and operate each property. Since the entity is separate and distinct from others, if a problem occurs which leads to a massive liability, the individual is protected from losing more than the value of that one property. Many other properties are protected, when owned by other distinct entities.

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 jurisdictions. 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.

Sharing gains

At the end of each

have no right to receive any of the profit.

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

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 German 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.

Sharing use

The owning entity makes rules governing use of property; each property may comprise areas that are made available to any and every member of the group to use. When the group is the entire nation, the same principle is in effect whether the property is small (e.g.

and passages to adjacent buildings.

One disadvantage of communal ownership, known as the

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.

Ownership models

• public body representing a community as opposed to an individual
  or private party.
  • ambiguous term that could refer to either social, partial state, or full state ownership.^[7]
• legal entities.^[8]
  • Fractional ownership: ownership held in percentage shares of an expensive asset, sold to individual owners, who are charged fees for the asset's management and variable use.
• Collective ownership: either joint ownership of an economic entity (e.g., a cooperative) or public ownership.^[9]
  • Cooperative ownership: ownership by the people who together operate and trade with an enterprise.^[10]
  • Common ownership non-exclusive ownership of property by everyone involuntarily.
• Property is also distinguished by whether it is movable (
  immovable property and real property
  ).
• Property can also be distinguished by whether or not it is owned with exclusive rights, such rights grant owners a monopoly to refuse ownership to non-owners.
• Concerning ownership of means of production and delineating which groups receive the direct profits, capitalism's private ownership is distinguished from socialism's social ownership.^[13]
• Ownership of resources can be distinguished as either as individual or communal, analogous to private or public in delineating who has rights of use.^[14]

Types of property

Personal property

Personal property is a type of

, or destroyed.

Personal property may be classified in a variety of ways, such as

choses in action

.

Land ownership

Real estate or

.

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.

Corporations and legal entities

An individual or group of individuals can own shares in corporations and other

for certain purposes.

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,

, 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

Intellectual property (IP) refers to a legal entitlement which sometimes attaches to the

.

Intellectual property

). 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 holder
  the exclusive right to control reproduction or adaptation of such works for a certain period of time.
• A
  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 (e.g. spare parts, furniture or textiles).
• A
  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 is possible to use intellectual property as collateral for a loan.

The basic

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

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.

Chattel slavery

Main article:

Chattel slavery

The term "Slavery" is commonly understood to refer to chattel slavery.

The living

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

Critical views

The question of ownership reaches back to the

" problem, where people tend to degrade common property more than they do private property. While Aristotle justified the existence of private ownership, he left two open questions

1. how to allocate property between what is private and common, and
2. how to allocate the private property within society[18]

Modern Western views

In

itself.

Ownership society

retirement saving

.

See also

• Bubuti system
• Cadastre
• Dominium
• Owned, a slang term for dominance or control
• Ownership society
• Possession (law)
• Public ownership
• State ownership

References