Subjects of property are understood as specific people (groups) who enter into property relations among themselves. The subjects of property can be an individual, a collective of people, society as a whole. This is determined by the accepted way of personification of property: the approach is either mono-subject or polysubjective. The latter, in turn, can be either share, when the shares of each of the subjects are determined, or shareless, when the share is not allocated. There is also institutional personification of property, when its subject is not a person or a group of certain persons, but a social institution (for example, the state).
The object of property is those elements of the conditions of production and the results of human activity that are assigned by this subject. All objects of property can be divided into two large groups: 1) material, 2) immaterial. With this approach, material objects of property are represented by two types – these are the means of production and consumer goods. Intangible objects of property include scientific knowledge, information, abilities of people (their labor force).
When legislatively fixing certain property relations, property objects usually use the following classification:
real estate; movable property; objects of intellectual property.
At the same time, real estate includes industrial and non-production buildings, roads, transport facilities, objects of production and non-production infrastructure, as well as land.
Movable property includes that property in relation to which it is possible to move. These are equipment, tools, cars, furniture, etc.
Objects of intellectual property are scientific works, manuscripts, inventions, discoveries, software of electronic equipment and other results and products of intellectual activity of people.
Legal protection of intellectual property is very important as a condition for its multiplication and development, as an incentive for creative work. It is also important for any country, because the further it goes, the more its progress, its wealth and well-being depend on creativity, on the achievements of science and their use.
Considering the objects of property, it should be emphasized that among all their diversity in any economic system, the means of production are the determining factors that ensure the position of the owner and economic power. Ownership of them, in turn, determines the ownership of the results of their production use, i.e. the created income.
It is known that without the means of production it is impossible to conduct production itself. Therefore, it is the ownership of the means of production that has a decisive effect on social production and the economic system as a whole. In an industrial society, the basis of which is machine production, ownership of the means of production (machines, etc.) is the economic basis and serves as a means of involving workers who do not possess it in the production process. This turns them into wage earners with the economic primacy (and power) of the owners of the means of production.
However, judging by the trends of world development, this is not always the case. Post-industrial production, which materializes the discoveries of the modern scientific and technological revolution, and in particular, scientific and information technologies, seems to be putting machine technologies “in the archive”. And not just them.
At the same time, the role of ownership of the means of production will also change. New technologies of the information and scientific type will require intellectual, innovative work for the first roles, without which they will be impossible. And this, in turn, will change the accents in the property. Intellectual property (on the capabilities and the result of their use) will rise immeasurably and take the leading role, in comparison with the ownership of the means of production.