Property Rights

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Maximilian Becker
• Subject Area: Private Law
• Term: from 2021 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 457773221

In German civil law, there has not yet been a comprehensive work specifically on the fundamental question of whether a uniform model is inherent in the various proprietary rights (e.g. tangible property, copyright or patent law). In research and education such a model is, at least implicitly, assumed to exist. However, since tangible property, the various IP rights and personality rights have developed under completely different conditions, this assumption is by no means self-evident and the depiction of such a model requires a certain degree of further development.In order to draw the line between similarities and differences, the work uses an approach that takes into account the functions of these rights and the theories underlying them. The result is a comprehensive model that explains the basic structure and functioning of property rights. This is linked to the transfer of traditional property rights into the digital age, i.e. to the question of rights in data and information, which has been intensively discussed for several years. The latter are in fact the linchpin of the proposed model:Starting with the genesis of the “Rechtsgegenstand” as the logical precondition for property rights, the focus of the first half of the work is on objects of law and objects of disposal (“Verfügungsobjekte”). All IP rights are explained in this course as "information-determining rights". In IP law, this not only allows a detachment from the less precise notion of "intellectual property", whose reference to information products such as digital film and image files or software copies is rarely clearly defined. The proposed understanding of these goods as informational representations of an ideal good allows at the same time a direct but minimally invasive connection to questions of data ownership by showing to what extent the existing property rights assign which layers and types of information to the entitled persons.The second half of the study is devoted to bringing together the various, sometimes fuzzy, concepts surrounding rights in rem. Here the connection of IP rights to the dogmatics of property law is carried out. In this respect, too, there is uncertainty as to the extent to which the problems and concepts coincide and where principal differences exist. This step is central to a comprehensive model, since these problems are closely intertwined with the doctrine of the objects of law.Finally, these findings are combined with the structure of licenses, which is also dogmatically only vaguely investigated.Numerous examples ensure that the work is constantly linked to practical problems. This serves not only for comprehensibility but also for systematic control and verifiability of the various results.

• DFG Programme: Publication Grants