1. Civil Law Camille OGEREAU
Ownership in France
Civil Law
Camille OGEREAU

2. Attributes of Ownership
Art. 544: Ownership is the right to enjoy and dispose of things in the most absolute manner, as long as they are not used in a way prohibited by statutes or regulations.
Right to enjoy the property
Usus
Right to use the thing
Right to not use the thing
Fructus
Right to collect the fruits
Three kind of fruits
Natural fruits
Industrial fruits
Civil fruits

3. Attributes of Ownership
Right to dispose : abusus
Material dimension
Possibility to change the substance of the thing
Judicial dimension
Possibility to renounce at all of parts of his rights on the thing
Possibility to transfer his rights to someone else

4. Characters of ownership
Absolute character
Fact that the owner has all the powers on the thing and can do what he wants with it
Encroachment 
When the owner of a land build a building on his land but overflow on the land of the neighbor.
Two solutions
Destruction of the part which encroach
Compensation of the damage + forced expropriation
Accession
Someone builds a building on a land of which he is not the owner
Owner of the land become owner of the building

5. Characters of ownership
Exclusif character
Owner only one who can enjoy the advantages of the thing
Perpetuality
No limitation time
No extinctive prescription
Temperament : things of intellectual property
Exception : fiduciary ownership

6. Protection of ownership
Action for recovery of property (Action en revendication)
Exerced by the owner to recover the natural possession of his good
« Action pétitoire » : action by which a person makes recognize its right referring on the act or the legal situation that gives him the real property right that is disputed.
3 conditions:
An owner who can prove his ownership
Loss of physically holding the well
A claim against the third party who has possession of the property but is not the owner.

7. Protection of ownership
Protection by the texts
Constitution
Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen
Article 2 : property is a natural and imprescriptible right
Article 17 : property is a sacred and inviolable right
Distinction between rules :
that would deprive an owner of his property
that simply restrict the exercise of the ownership
Control of constitutionality checks if there is a public interest to justify it

8. Protection of ownership
ECHR
Article 1 of Protocol No. 1: Every natural or legal person is entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of his possessions.
4 cumulative conditions of privation of property
procedure expected, framed and fulfilled
justified deprivation of property
deprivation of property proportionate to the objective pursued
pecuniary compensation to the owner.

9. Limitation of ownership
In the law
Causes of public interest
Planning law, security, safety, aesthetic
In the jurisprudence
Theory of abnormal neighborhood disturbances
Case of responsability without fault
Force the neighbor that causes a disturbance to its neighbor to repair the consequences.
Exoneration
Force majeure
Victim’s fault

10. Limitation of ownership
Abuse of rights
Clément Bayard’s case, 3 August1915 gives the principle
There is abuse of the right of ownership when the owner acts for the sole purpose of harming others
2 cumulative conditions
Action must be free of utility
Made with malicious intent

11. Thank you !