CONTEMPORARY PROPERTY (RIGHTS) CHALLENGES

DIGITAL ASSETS, ANIMALS AND HUMAN BODY PARTS

Abstract

Contemporary general social development reflects its challenges in inducting into three fundamental categories: digital, green and health. Each of the three categories above has its civil (private) law issues, which primarily concern the concept of property itself. The paper focuses on key stakeholders from three mentioned categories: digital assets, animals and human body parts. Technology has had a significant impact on human life, and as a result, a person, during his/her lifetime, accumulates a huge number of digital assets. The most important questions concerning digital assets are: can they be treated as corporeal things (or incorporeal entities equalized with corporeal things), and what are the users’ legal rights over these assets? To a certain extent, the mentioned question is transferred to animals as well, through various animal ethical and biocentric considerations. In a situation where animals also greatly influence human life, the question arises whether the conception of thing(s) in the context of animals has become inadequate. Can we still treat animals as property, or are new concepts needed to understand animals’ legal status? Are new concepts also necessary for understanding the (civil) law status of human body parts? Increasing biomedical technological development has led to different ways of preserving human life and health. However, such preservation carries with it a priori various legal and bioethical questions that need to be answered in order to distinguish whether and under what conditions parts of the human body can be the objects of property rights. In observing the mentioned civil law and in certain situations, (bio)ethical and legal philosophical problems and questions, the authors approach analytically, comparatively and casuistically.