ABSTRACT
Digital assets challenge property law’s ontology of things. National property laws diverge as to the types of digital assets recognised as property as well as the degree of recognition afforded. Their lack of a physical instantiation, coupled with the fact that digital assets are neither contingent upon recognition by the legal system nor upon enforcement by individuals, forms the common denominator that underlies the challenges faced by legal systems.
While the underlying cause of the challenges may be shared across legal systems, divergences in proprietary taxonomies ensure that the manner in which these challenges manifest is unique to each national context. As a result, the conceptual tools employed to incorporate digital assets also differ. This contribution examines English, French, and German property law, identifying three such tools through which these systems seek to incorporate certain digital assets into their proprietary taxonomies: control, possession, and value It shows that the extent to which such concepts can effectively incorporate digital assets into existing categories of property depends on the scope and severity of these system-specific challenges.
Verstappen, Jasper, Towards an Ontology of Property Law and Digital Assets: A Comparative Analysis of German, French and English Law (August 28, 2026).
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