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In a recording title system, a landowner faces two risks: the risk of a claim from a previously dispossessed owner and risk of being dispossessed by adverse possession, squatting, or encroachment. In this study, we build a real options model to investigate the issues regarding the optimal statute of limitations. In the absence of any uncertainty, a longer statute of limitations delays land development, and thus a regulator may allow for a more lenient policy of statutory limitations for land located in the suburb than in the city center. At any given location, greater uncertainty in urban rents will cause a landowner to wait longer. Anticipating this outcome, the regulator should shorten the statute of limitations to increase the likelihood for the current owner to retain title.

This article reviews the statutory reform of Chinese private international law from the perspective of property rights which concludes that notwithstanding the significant improvement, the new Private International Law Act of China are fraught with various defects. In the field of property, Article 37 and Article 38 are particularly problematic as the introduction of unlimited party autonomy into the choice-of-law rules for movables and res in transitu is theoretically indefensible and practically troublesome. Moreover, there are a number of defects or problems with Article 39 and Article 40 of the Act respectively. What’s more, the Act neglects some other important types of property that call for special treatment, such as cultural property, and assignment of debt. In the end, the article puts forward the corresponding suggestions for improvement.

Adverse possession is proved only when possession is peaceful, open, continuous and hostile. Physical fact of exclusive possession and the animus possidendi to hold as owner in exclusion to the actual owner are the most important factors that are to be accounted for in order to constitute adverse possession. Animus possidendi is one of the ingredients of adverse possession and unless the person possessing the land has the requisite animus the period for prescription does not commence. Non-use of the property by the owner even for a long time does not affect his title. But the position alters when another person takes possession of the property and asserts a right over it. Adverse possession must start with a wrongful dispossession of the rightful owner and be actual, visible, exclusive, hostile, and continued over the statutory period.

This paper, delivered as the Annual Francis Gurry Lecture at Melbourne University in 2012, considers intellectual property law as a species of public law serving public purposes. The purposes reflecting the interests of creators, owners and users of intellectual property rights are in tension. That tension affects the normative clarity of intellectual property law and its effective enforcement. It may inform the construction of intellectual property statutes and the application of evaluative criteria of validity under those statutes. In Australia, intellectual property statutes are made under constitutional authority with respect to specified categories of intellectual property, the specific content of which may vary with technological change. Official decisions effecting the creation or discontinuance in intellectual property rights are statutory and subject to constitutionally based judicial review in addition to particular appeal rights conferred by statute. At the heart of the public law aspect of intellectual property rights is a tension between their characterisation as proprietary or instrumental.

In the post-human rights era the question has arisen on several occasions as to whether the automatic and arbitrary termination of the registered owner’s title through the common law and statutory principles governing adverse possession of land is contrary to the Article 1, Protocol 1 of the European Convention. The matter fell to be decided in J.A. Pye (Oxford) Ltd v United Kingdom ([2005] 3 EGLR 1) where the European Court of Human Rights held that the automatic termination of a registered owners title after 12 years possession was indeed a violation of Article 1, Protocol 1. More recently, the decision of the European Court has been overturned by the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights where the Grand Chamber has held that a squatters’ right to another persons land are not disproportionate (J. A. Pye (Oxford) Ltd and Another v United Kingdom, The Times, October 1st 2007). This short article examines the decision of the Grand Chamber.

The practicalities of a modern land administration system require some means of boundary adjustment (or repair). Of the possible mechanisms it is concluded that an alternative to adverse possession, statutory encroachment, is preferable to part parcel adverse possession.

garded as valuable and warranted at the time (Wilkinson 1992; Stevens 1996). Although new scarcities and priorities are leading to revisions in state laws regarding instream flows, statutory remedies alone can put precious little water back in Western streams (McDonnell and Rice 1993). I will make a related argument here: that historical bias has also worked against land-based habitat enhancement and recreation. In particular, state laws relating to adverse possession of land still favor extractive uses over nonconsumptive uses.

It is a fact that title to land may be acquired by holding it adversely to its true owner for a certain period of time. This is known as “Adverse possession.” Adverse possession is a highly controversial practice that the law provides a pathway for, and when it occurs, individuals’ rights, specifically property rights, as well as other rights are affected. This paper examines adverse possession in the State of Florida and the state’s statute regarding the elements and requirements of adverse possession. The author discusses several topics and issues related to adverse possession by providing general definitions of adverse possession and examining the justifications or purposes for adverse possession. The general elements or requirements of adverse possession and those specific to Florida Statute are presented with examples of cases involving adverse possession. The advantages and disadvantages of the application of the Statute in the State of Florida in modern times are discussed and the author explores whether or not the Statute on adverse possession should be modified, and recommends potential changes or modifications to the Statute on adverse possession. Finally, a summary of the findings on adverse possession is presented and several important remarks regarding adverse possession in general are presented to engage the readers’ minds in thinking about this practice from personal and non-personal point of views.

The question of a constitutional property regime governing eminent domain gave rise to nuanced and principled debates in the Constituent Assembly (the body which framed the Indian Constitution between 1947 and 1950) and in subsequent Parliament meetings regarding Constitutional amendments. However, these extensive deliberations resulted in a clause which only addressed the most superficial aspects of property rights in India. Similarly, the statutory frameworks which govern government acquisition of land, in particular the Land Acquisition Act of 1894, are important to understand, but they provide only another part of the puzzle. This paper starts earlier in history – at the inception of eminent domain in India – in order provide the colonial context on which my argument rests. I argue that this concept of compulsory land acquisition by the government, as inherited from the British and encapsulated in the Constitution, the statutory law, and in practice, is inappropriate for the reality of how property rights are held and exercised in India and incapable of being reformed toward the socially inclusive purposes for which property rights were included in the Constitution. Because of this discord, efforts to re-formulate the law which hold current forms of eminent domain as their focal point continue to fall short of real transformation of the property rights regimes in India.

This paper focuses on two related questions at the intersection of antitrust and intellectual property law. First, under what circumstances must the holder of a patent or a copyright or the owner of a trade secret allow others to use that intellectual property? Second, under what circumstances can the holder of an intellectual property right use that right to make it difficult for another party to succeed in a related market? These questions have vexed antitrust and intellectual property scholars alike ever since the Federal Circuit ruled in 2000 that patent holders “may enforce the statutory right to exclude others from making, using, or selling the claimed invention free from liability under the antitrust laws,” a ruling that directly contradicted the Ninth Circuit ruling that antitrust liability could be imposed for almost identical conduct, depending on the motivations of the patent holder. The various proceedings in United States v. Microsoft only added fuel to the firestorm of controversy.After briefly retracing the jurisprudential path to see how this situation arose, we propose a solution that primarily involves a variation on the real property concept of adverse possession for the intellectual property space along with a slight extension of the Essential Facilities Doctrine for industries that exhibit network effects. We examine, both for firms with and without market power, how our proposal would resolve the situations presented by large fixed asset purchases, the introduction of entirely new products, and operating systems with network effects. We also demonstrate how our proposal could be applied in the European antitrust enforcement context.

The proposed Hong Kong Land Title Registration system does not include provisions for the variation in boundary location or remedying any discrepancies in the boundary locations of a land parcel. The practicalities of land administration require some means of boundary adjustment (or repair) in any land system, including registered title. This is so notwithstanding that there appears to be an inherent contradiction in allowing one of the possible mechanisms (part parcel adverse possession) in a registered title system. This paper argues that a modern LIS (including the proposed Hong Kong registered land system) should include such a mechanism. It is even suggested that failure to provide for boundary repair merely postpones the inevitable adoption of such provisions. Of the possible mechanisms it is concluded that an alternative to adverse possession, statutory encroachment, is preferable to part parcel adverse possession. A further suggestion is that provisions for statutory encroachment be included within the proposed HK Title Registration Bill with the proviso that the provision be repealed if left unused.

The decision of the High Court in Mabo v State of Queensland [No. 2] (Mabo [No. 2]) recognised the rights of indigenous people to land that arise from their original occupation of that land. Previously, these rights had not been recognised by the law. As a consequence, many statutory arrangements did not accommodate the existence of native title rights and interests. The relationship between native title rights and planning control legislation is significant. The emergence of native title as a new category of private use rights, previously not considered in planning schemes, may have significant implications for the adequacy of those schemes. In this paper, the relationship between the Local Government (Planning and Environment) Act 1990 (Qld) and the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) will be considered