The nature of ownership

The basis of ownership

As a working definition we may regard ownership as the ultimate property interest and the means by which we signify the person or persons with primary (but not necessarily exclusive) control of a thing. Such a definition requires us to separate the notions of ownership and property while acknowledging that the terms are often used, somewhat loosely, as synonyms. Property is a broad term which encompasses any interest in a thing whereby the interest holder acquires rights enforceable beyond the original parties to the transaction (or other means) by which the interest was acquired. Thus the term property extends to a range of diverse interests such as easements (such as a right of way over land) and choses in action (such as the benefit of a contract which is normally assignable and may thus be enforced by someone other than a party to the original contract). In contrast, ownership is a particular type of property interest in which the person designated as owner is deemed, in some sense at least, to have the greatest possible interest in the thing. As a subset of property it is consequently concerned with two quite separate sets of relations. The first is the owner's relationship with other people (whether they be non-interest holders or subsidiary interest holders in the thing owned) and the second is the owner's relationship to the thing itself.