Category Archives: Property
Jakub Wyczik, ‘Ownership in the 21st century: property law of digital assets’
ABSTRACT ‘If buying isn’t owning, then piracy isn’t stealing,’ is a common refrain on the internet. With this in mind, the article delves into the landscape of property rights concerning digital assets, debunks common misconceptions and clarifies their legal position in the evolving economy. Through an analysis of their intangible nature, the article argues that […]
Alvin Hoi-Chun Hung, ‘Evolution of Intangible Property to Crypto-Assets: A Historical and Comparative Perspective of Legal Pragmatism in Anglo-American Common Law and Chinese Civil Law’
ABSTRACT The emergence of crypto-assets, a novel category of assets, has posed significant challenges to property law across various legal systems. The integration of these intangible assets into property law frameworks proves complicated for many civil law jurisdictions, which tend to adhere to dogmatic approaches. In contrast, Anglo-American common law and Chinese civil law systems, […]
Jennifer Rothman, ‘Postmortem Publicity Rights at the Property-Personality Divide’
ABSTRACT In this essay, I consider what private law theory and its various understandings of property reveal about the right of publicity. I begin by identifying the current state of right of publicity laws and the ongoing confusion over the right’s status as property. I then consider what it would mean to take seriously the […]
Rivlin and Lifshitz, ‘Reimagining Marital Property at Death’
ABSTRACT This paper argues that death should not automatically terminate the marital partnership, and it suggests a novel and comprehensive model for the regulation of marital property upon death. According to the conventional view, the idea of marital partnership implies an equal division of the marital assets upon dissolution. Thus, in the event of death, […]
Pavel Slutskiy, ‘Yes, You Should Own Bitcoin’
ABSTRACT This article attempts to challenge the argument that bitcoin cannot be owned within a libertarian legal order. According to the contested view, bitcoin, as a digital asset, does not meet the criteria for traditional ownership due to its nonphysical nature as an intangible asset. However, the counterargument presented in the article asserts that people […]
Jie (Jeanne) Huang, ‘A System Without Ownership: How China’s New Data Property Rights System Will Impact Digital Trade’
ABSTRACT China announced an unprecedented data property rights system to promote data commercialization in December 2022 and issued implementation rules in 2023. The property rights system attempts to clarify data handlers’ rights over ‘big data’ (ie data derived or constituted from personal or nonpersonal data). It also establishes parameters for China’s regulations concerning data handlers […]
Amy Held, ‘(Digital) Things as Objects of Property Rights: What Can Crypto Learn From Comparative Law?’
ABSTRACT This review article engages critically with Christian von Bar’s proposed definition of things as objects of property rights and their proposed place as one category in a tripartite taxonomy of the objects of private law; both expounded as part of a broader aim of bringing together the property laws of the Member States of […]
Robin Kundis Craig, ‘Just Add Water: The Muddy World of Private Property Rights in a Panarchal Reality’
ABSTRACT Advocates for private property rights tend to atomize real property, dividing land into individual parcels and, legally, ‘bundles of sticks’. Only a few common-law doctrines, such as nuisance, acknowledge the potential for activities on one real estate parcel to affect either other discrete parcels or the community as a whole. In the US Supreme […]
Tatiana Synodinou, ‘Access Restrictions in a Dematerialized World: An EU Copyright Law Perspective’
ABSTRACT Digitalization has radically transformed the way we understand and enjoy property. The function of property has changed. It has been transformed into a right to administer access to resources, such as experiences or functionalities. In other words, we do not need physical possession in order to enjoy it. The concept of property is intrinsically […]
Christine Desan, ‘Property, Money, and the Claim of Capital’
ABSTRACT Capitalism identifies as essential a particular relationship between property and money. According to that claim, property is a material claim secured to free and equal individuals. Money is the instrument that measures, transfers, and stores that value in stable form, an instrument emergent from exchange and neutral in the sense that it does not […]