Of course, we are not claiming that isolation and interconnection are the only reason why teachings converge or diverge. Many other factors – on the one hand the advantage of convergence – influence the decisions of the legislator. That is, the great benefits of convergence can lead to interconnected lessons towards convergence. Europe`s efforts to streamline mortgage registration are a case in point. On the other hand, the small benefits of convergence will leave the lessons isolated intact. Teachings related to membership and research are two examples. So far, so familiar. And yet, the comparative problem of identifying the real subject of studies on convergence or divergence in the case of ownership is at its extreme. To understand what to expect in terms of convergence and divergence between property law systems, we need a theory of how these systems work and the problems they are supposed to solve. When the contours of property systems reflect the goals they are meant to serve and the cost of achieving those goals, we can begin to predict how these forces will unfold in the comparative arena. Internet of Things (IoT) – important legal issues The Internet of Things (IoT) is the term given to everyday objects (not just traditional computing devices such as laptops and smartphones) that are connected to the Internet. Other languages used in the context of IoT include: connected devices, smart objects, the Internet of Services, machine-to-machine (M2M) technology, sensor networks, network of networks, and ubiquitous or ubiquitous computing.
IoT can be applied to objects as diverse as running shoes, buildings, cars, fridge-freezers and drones. With the help of embedded technology, these objects can communicate and interact over the Internet, with each other, with the user, service provider and/or their environment, and they can be monitored and controlled remotely. This practice note provides an introduction to IoT technology and covers the following topics: • The technology behind IoT • Identification of legal issues • Application programming interfaces (APIs) • Telecommunications and electrical equipment • Intellectual property – Overview • Proprietary rights and licensing issues • Competition law • Consumer protection • Liability and fault • Compliance requirements • The model contract Appropriate • Legal issues of the future This practice notice does not take into account data protection, privacy or cybersecurity. These issues are addressed separately in the practice note: Internet of Things (IoT) – Data Protection, Privacy and Security. The technology behind the IoT The introduction of Internet Protocol version 6 (see: LNB News 27/05/2008 64), the availability of cheaper electronic technology, the ubiquity of connectivity (Internet access, especially via This article uses a unique set of property laws in 119 jurisdictions around the world to test theories of convergence/divergence in comparative property law. Our theory predicts that, first, because legal systems face equally positive transaction costs in delineating property rights, the structure of property rights will converge among all jurisdictions in the world or has remained similar for some time in the distant past. Second, our theory postulates that the style of property law tends to converge when the teachings in question are isolated, but diverges when they are interconnected. Our descriptive data and analyses support the theory. Lessons on ownership, sale, condominiums, shared rentals and limited property rights are striking examples. Britannica.com: Convergence Lexicon Article Our approach to convergence and divergence is rooted in a combination of the propensity for change and the relative proximity of starting points. In a system like property, which is a combination of spontaneous order and design, change will flourish or be cut off over time (regardless of its source), depending on the resulting ability (whatever the definition) of the overall system.
Lee Alston and Bernardo Mueller build on a well-known evolutionary model and add this aspect to the bundle of rights. [10] The various elements of the set of rights – rights to grow tomatoes, rights to build a shed, walking rights, etc. – may be relatively isolated or have “epistatic” compounds. [11] In an epistatic compound, a modification of an element has an effect on a connected element. Thus, a change in one gene can produce an effect in another gene if they are epistatically connected. Similarly, the right to draw water affects the value of the right to grow tomatoes, but the right to prevent aerial overflights is (presumably) not related to the right to draw water or the right to grow tomatoes. [†] †. Research Professor and Director of the Center for Empirical Legal Studies, Institutum Iurisprudentiae, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. J.S.D., New York University School of Law.
Email: kleiber@sinica.edu.tw. This article is funded by the Career Development Award 106-H02 from academia Sinica. For coding property rights in more than 100 jurisdictions, I would like to thank my research staff for over five years in Taiwan, Peru, New Zealand, India, Israel, Colombia, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Uganda, Turkey, France and South Africa. They are Winnie Awino, Harika Bakaraju, Gahli Berger, Paloma Carreno, Jung-Han Chang, Danlin Chang, Gina Chavarry, Meng-Xin Cai, Chih-jui Chen, Tzu-Yuan Chu, Yichen Chu, Gital Dames, Huseyin Guzeler, Melanie Lee, Ingrid Lee, Christina Lee, Calvin Lim, Tin-jun Liu, Hannah Musgrave, Maria Oluyeju, Anne-Line Schwint, Zun Wei and Daniella Weinrauch. Librarians at the University of Chicago School of Law and Cornell Law School were instrumental in identifying foreign legal documents when I was a visiting professor there. Some of the above research assistants are LL.M. students. in Chicago and Cornell. The University of Chicago School of Law also covered the cost of the LL.M.
research assistants. The University of Iowa School of Law Law Library also provided me with foreign legal documents when I was a Bonfield Scholar for 2016. Professor XU Guodong, although we never met in person, allowed me to copy his collections from the Civil Code. Based on a single dataset on property rights in 119 jurisdictions around the world (see Figure 1)[24], we find that in 2015, many ownership issues are still radically different. For example, in civil law countries, rei vindicatio – the act of forcing someone to return ownership of a thing to its owner – is the principal right of an owner, while this expression can hardly be translated into a legal term in English (“revindication” is the common English word that means nothing to common law lawyers). Common law landowners, of course, are generally well protected – in different ways with different designations (trespassing, conversion, replevin, etc.). In particular, concrete solutions are more likely to converge if the doctrine in question is more isolated from other teachings. This applies to the structural and especially stylistic aspects of the law. In an interconnected doctrine, such as the definition of ownership, convergence (in fact, any deviation from the status quo) requires moving other parts in the system to track change.
[28] Especially in the world of civil law, the fear of unintended consequences of a modification of a fundamental doctrine in a civil code could nullify any proposed deviation. The France and Germany each have their own conceptual system of possession, difficult to uproot after hundreds of years of doctrinal interpretation. When European scientists proposed the draft Common Framework of Reference[29], they neither found common ground nor simplified the concept. Instead, they managed to keep the two conceptual systems of possession together – which led to a lot of confusion and contradiction. [30] On the other hand, a “downstream” doctrine, more isolated from other doctrines, has more room for manoeuvre, since in the worst case, a failed experiment would not drag the whole system down. The division of co-ownership is an excellent example of such a doctrine. The above data show that ninety-one jurisdictions (77 per cent) prefer partitioning in the form of in-kind contributions and allow compartmentalization by sale. [31] The widespread form of co-ownership is another example. [32] [7]. See Anthony Ogus, The Economic Basis of Legal Culture: Networks and Monopolization, 22 Oxford J. Legal Stud.
419, 419–20, 423 (2002); see also Nuno Garoupa & Thomas S. Ulen, The Market for Legal Innovation: Law and Economics in Europe and the United States, 59 Ala. L. Rev. 1555, 1615–16 (2008). For a new approach that quantitatively uses the content of property law to categorize legal families, see generally Yun-chien Chang et al., Drawing the Legal Family Tree: An Empirical Comparative Study of 108 Property Doctrines in 128 Jurisdictions (June 28, 2017) (unpublished discussion paper) (available at ssrn.com/abstract=2993794).