The Oxford English Dictionary defines a license as “a permission from an authority to own, use, or do something. Locke's theory of natural rights has the distinct advantage of providing a general description of property that provides some guidance as to when legitimate property is present or not. We suggest five principles of bodily rights and show how they can be applied to the construction of ethically appropriate sets of rights on biological material. A person's ownership of land includes the rights that allow them to prevent other people from entering the land, the right to charge them for doing so, the right to sell the land, etc.
It focuses on rights related to the alienation of biological material; therefore, other rights related to a person's body, such as the right to medical care, are not included. Depending on your situation, you may have full access to your full package of rights (or your entire pile of bananas), or you may share those rights with other entities. Some of these packages will be property rights in the traditional sense, while others will be better described as inalienable or non-negotiable rights. The natural rights theory of property received its most famous expression from John Locke in his Two Treatises on Government (1690). The right of possession is quite simple; it only refers to the right to own or own property.
Therefore, property rights must be organized in ways that promote an appropriate mix of social objectives, such as justice and economic productivity. However, it should be noted that the right to bequeath should not be included among the rights that define the concept of property. Only after this has been done can it be determined whether the package can be classified as a property right or as another type of right, such as an inalienable or non-negotiable right. The words “own” and “property” are often used to denote not only (full) property rights, but also some (but not all) of the inalienable and non-negotiable rights. While these exclusive rights involve other people's right to freedom of expression, the scope of such licenses must be limited and carefully adapted to promote certain public policies, such as the promotion of science and the arts, the protection of consumers and the prevention of unfair commercial practices.
