Dutch Civil Code

Book 5 Real property rights

Title 5.1 Ownership in general

Article 5:1 Definition 'right of ownership'
- 1. Ownership is the most comprehensive property right that a person, the ‘owner’, can have to (in) a thing.
- 2. The owner is free to use the thing to the exclusion of everyone else, provided that he respects the rights and entitlements of others to the thing and observes the restrictions based on rules of written and unwritten law.
- 3. The owner of the thing becomes the owner of its separated fruits and benefits, except when another person is entitled to them.

Article 5:2 Right to reclaim the thing
The owner of a thing is entitled to (re)claim it from everyone who keeps it without a right or title.

Article 5:3 Accession
As far as the law does not provide otherwise, the owner of a thing is the owner of all its components.