In law, an exclusive right is the power or right to perform an action in relation to an object or other thing which others cannnot perform. The law may require that a person seek such rights through application, or it may automatically grant such rights. Law (from the Old Norse lagu) in politics and jurisprudence, is a set of rules or norms of conduct which mandate, proscribe or permit specified relationships among people and organizations, intended to provide methods for ensuring the impartial treatment of such people, and provide punishments of/for those who do... It has been suggested that Bases of power be merged into this article or section. ... A right is the power or privilege to which one is justly entitled or a thing to which one has a just claim. ... An entity is something that has a distinct, separate existence, though it need not be a material existence. ... Law (from the Old Norse lagu) in politics and jurisprudence, is a set of rules or norms of conduct which mandate, proscribe or permit specified relationships among people and organizations, intended to provide methods for ensuring the impartial treatment of such people, and provide punishments of/for those who do... Person, in the classic sense, refers to a living human being. ...

Exclusive rights may be granted in property law and intellectual property law as well as in relation to public utilities. Many scholars argue that such rights form the basis for the concepts of property and ownership. Property law is the area of law that governs the various forms of ownership in real property (land as distinct from personal or movable possessions) and in personal property, within the common law legal system. ... In law, particularly in common law jurisdictions, intellectual property is a form of legal entitlement which allows its holder to control the use of certain intangible ideas and expressions. ... A public utility is a company that maintains the infrastructure for a public service. ... // Use of the term The concept of property or ownership has no single or universally accepted definition. ... Ownership is the state or fact of exclusive possession or control of some thing, which may be an object or some kind of property. ...

Types of exclusive rights

Property

In relation to property, an exclusive right will, for the most part, arise when something tangible is acquired; as a result, others are prevented from exercising control of that thing. For example, a person may prohibit others from entering and using his or her land, or from taking his or her personal possessions. However, an exclusive right is not necessarily absolute, as an easement may allow a certain level of public access to private land. // Use of the term The concept of property or ownership has no single or universally accepted definition. ... Real property is a legal term encompassing real estate and ownership interests in real estate (immovable property). ... Personal property is a type of property. ... An easement is the right of use over the real property of another. ...

Intellectual property

Most governments recognize a bundle of exclusive rights in relation to works of authorship, inventions, and identifications of origin. These rights are sometimes spoken of under the umbrella term "intellectual property". An example is copyright, which grants a copyright holder a negative right to exclude others from exploiting his or her artistic or creative work. The position is generally similar with patents and trademarks. Exclusive rights arise from a grant of patent or registration of a trademark, while in other cases such rights may arise through use (eg. copyright or common-law trademark). The bundle of rights theory is a common way of explaining how rights in property are held. ... The expression umbrella term means a word that provides a superset or grouping of related concepts. ... Intellectual property, or IP, refers to a legal entitlement which sometimes attaches to the expressed form of an idea, or to some other intangible subject matter. ... Copyright symbol. ... A negative right is a right, either moral or decreed by law, to not be subject to an action of another human being (usually abuse or coercion). ... A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a state to a person for a fixed period of time in exchange for the regulated, public disclosure of certain details of a device, method, process or composition of matter (substance) (known as an invention) which is new, inventive, and... A trademark (Commonwealth English: trade mark) is a distinctive sign of some kind which is used by a business to uniquely identify itself and its products and services to consumers, and to distinguish the business and its products or services from those of other businesses. ...

Holding an intellectual property right generally means that the rights holder can maintain certain controls in relation to the subject matter in which the IP right subsists. For example, a person who buys a copy of a computer program which is subject to copyright may use the software for personal use, but will probably be prohibited from creating or distributing copies of that software, subject to certain exceptions such as fair use or fair dealing, which vary widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. The fair use doctrine is an aspect of United States copyright law that provides for the legal, non-licensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another authors work under a four-factor balancing test. ... Fair dealing is a doctrine of limitations and exceptions to copyright which is found in many of the common law jurisdictions of the Commonwealth of Nations. ...

History and arguments

In property law, exclusive rights have often been the codification of pre-existing social norms with regard to land or chattels. In sociology, a norm, or social norm, is a rule that is socially enforced. ... Personal property is a type of property. ...

In addition, some scholars (particularly in continental Europe) argue that copyrights, patents, and the like are the codification of some kind of moral right, natural right, or personality right. However, such arguments can only be consistently justified through instrumentalism or consequentialism, as exemplified by the reasoning evident in Article One of the United States Constitution that copyrights and patents exist solely "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." Continental Europe refers to the continent of Europe, explicitly excluding European islands and peninsulae. ... Moral rights are rights of creators of copyrighted works generally recognized in civil law jurisdictions and first recognized in France and Germany, before they were included in the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works in 1928. ... Human rights are rights which some hold to be inalienable and belonging to all humans. ... Personality rights are generally considered to consist of two types of rights: the right to privacy, or to keep ones image and likeness from being exploited without permission or contractual compensation, and the right to publicity use of ones identity, which is similar to the use of a... In the philosophy of science, instrumentalism is the view that concepts and theories are merely useful instruments whose worth is measured not by whether the concepts and theories are true or false (or correctly depict reality), but how effective they are in explaining and predicting phenomena. ... Consequentialism is a moral theory that holds that what ultimately counts in evaluating actions or policies of action are the consequences that result from the particular action or policy pursued. ... Wikisource has original text related to this article: Article One of the United States Constitution Article One of the United States Constitution establishes the legislative branch of the United States government, known as the Congress, which includes the House of Representatives and the Senate. ...

Other

Privately granted rights, created by contract, may occasionally appear very similar to exclusive rights, but are only enforceable against the grantee, and not the world at large. All the textbooks define a contract as either a promise or an agreement that is enfored or recognised by the law. ...

Quotes

• It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it; but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. (Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson, 1813)