What includes the bundle of rights?

Law

What includes the bundle of rights?

Mary McMahon

Last Modified Date: November 01, 2022

What includes the bundle of rights?
Mary McMahon Last Modified Date: November 01, 2022

The bundle of rights is a concept used to illustrate the set of linked rights property owners have over their real estate and intellectual property. Owners can lease, license, or give up some of their rights while retaining ownership. These rights can be restored through a variety of activities. In the bundle of rights metaphor, each right is like a stick in a bundle. The owner can pass out sticks without giving up the whole armful, and can take sticks back and reintegrate them into the bundle.

Application of this concept to real estate is relatively ancient, as property owners typically have rights to possess, control, and enjoy their property. They can choose to exclude people from their land, and they have the right to ultimate disposition. The property owner may choose to lease out the real estate, in which case the tenant has rights of possession and enjoyment, taking those sticks from the bundle. Likewise, tenants can decide to exclude unwanted persons from their property.

What includes the bundle of rights?
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The lease does not weaken other rights; the landlord still ultimately decides how to dispose of the land, for example. Landlords can also grant other rights, like easements, which do not infringe on the bundle of rights. When a road cuts through a farm, for instance, the government in charge of the road does not get to dictate how the land around the road should be used. The bundle of rights concept allows for selective distribution of different property rights, without endangering the underlying ownership.

It is possible to place liens on property, another example of the bundle of rights at work. A home with a lien on it cannot be disposed of without the permission of the lienholder, but the owner still controls the property. When the owner resolves the lien, the right to dispose reverts, and the lienholder no longer has any ability to dictate the terms of sales.

This concept can also be applied to intellectual property. A copyright holder owns a copyright and can opt to license or lease it, or to donate licensing in the case of a charitable endeavor. Copyright holders have control over how their intellectual property can be used, and can decline some uses while accepting others. They have a bundle of rights under the law, which they can choose to exercise in ways that suit them. Giving up one right does not automatically imperil the others, which allows for tighter control of intellectual property while facilitating free exchange because copyright holders don't need to worry about diluting their rights.

What includes the bundle of rights?
Mary McMahon

Ever since she began contributing to the site several years ago, Mary has embraced the exciting challenge of being a MyLawQuestions researcher and writer. Mary has a liberal arts degree from Goddard College and spends her free time reading, cooking, and exploring the great outdoors.

What includes the bundle of rights?
Mary McMahon

Ever since she began contributing to the site several years ago, Mary has embraced the exciting challenge of being a MyLawQuestions researcher and writer. Mary has a liberal arts degree from Goddard College and spends her free time reading, cooking, and exploring the great outdoors.

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What includes the bundle of rights?

Laws governing Indigenous Peoples’ and local community forest rights vary from context to context, and from country to country. Some communities are legally permitted to use forest resources like fuelwood and fruit for commercial purposes, while others are allowed only to use these resources for basic survival needs. Some communities have the legal right to decide whether outsiders can enter their land and extract resources like lumber, minerals, or oil, while other communities cannot.

The land rights that national-level tenure regimes recognize can be unpacked into the seven types, below. By looking at national laws and regulations, it is possible to have a more exact idea of the range of the legally recognized rights—and what that means in practice—for the Indigenous Peoples and local communities living in these forests.

  • Access: Access rights allow a community and its members to enter a forest area.
  • Duration: Duration measures the permanence of allocated rights.
  • Exclusion: Exclusion is the ability to refuse another individual, group, or entity access to and use of a particular resource.
  • Management: Management can be defined by the legal limits of other rights, and it can also be used to empower a community to articulate its rights to alienation or the exclusion of particular resources.
  • Alienation: The right to alienate one’s property is the right to transfer one’s rights to another entity.
  • Withdrawal: Withdrawal rights are the right to benefit from forest products, for subsistence or commercial purposes.
  • Due Process & Compensation: Due Process and Compensation is the right to due process and compensation in cases of eminent domain.

Different laws “bundle”combinations of these rights into separate regimes that represent the collective rights for areas or forest communities. For a detailed definition of the “bundle of rights,”please refer to Section 2 in the report What Rights?

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Who came up with the bundle of rights?

In the early 1960s, A. M. Honore wrote an essay on ownership in which he attempted to list the incidents of ownership that have come to be known as the bundle of rights. Honore claimed that his list of incidents of full ownership were “common to all 'mature' legal systems.” The list below provides general definitions.

What are property rights?

Property rights define the theoretical and legal ownership of resources and how they can be used. Property can be owned by individuals, businesses, and governments. These rights define the benefits associated with ownership of the property.

What is the right to exclude?

A right to exclude is any right to forbid a use or set of uses of a particular resource by one or more people; more formally, it is any negative claim-right concerning the use of a discrete “thing.” Second, the chapter sketches and briefly evaluates certain normative assertions about the right to exclude.