property

The right to control the use of a thing (such as land, a building, a work of art, or a computer program). In both US and English law, a distinction is made between real property, which involves a degree of geographical fixity, and personal property, which does not. Property is never absolute, since any society places limits on an individual's property (such as the right to transfer that property to another). Different societies have held widely varying interpretations of the nature of property and the extent of the rights of the owner of that property.