Verkehrsfähigkeit »Digitaler Güter«. Zur Dogmatik der Verkehrsfähigkeit von Rechten

The article deals with fundamental issues of transferability of property rights with regard to digital goods. Requirements of a legally based transfer of goods are an identifiable and controllable »value entity«, which is endowed with legal protection, attributed to an individual right holder, and that is qualified as »transferable« by legislation. The transferability of rights has considerable benefits compared with the mere factual transfer of goods. The need for alternative solutions such as the legal abandonment of ownership and the subsequent acquisition by appropriation is avoidable. Developments to fully transferable rights can be traced with regard to movable property and land, claims for payment, intellectual property, and privacy rights. The power of disposal legitimizes the carrying out of a legal assignment. Contractual restrictions of power of disposal are valid only the fairly limited areas of »relative« rights (for example claims for payment). The UsedSoft case law could have created a basis for the transferability of digital goods as far as they identify rights of ownership in the digital representation of software.