English property law is the law of acquisition, sharing and protection of valuable assets in England and Wales. While part of the United Kingdom, many elements of Scots property law are different. In England, property law encompasses four main topics:
English land law, or the law of "real property"
English trusts law
English personal property law
United Kingdom intellectual property law
Property in land is the domain of the law of real property. The law of personal property is particularly important for commercial law and insolvency. Trusts affect everything in English property law. Intellectual property is also an important branch of the law of property. For unregistered land see Unregistered land in English law.
English land law and History of English land law
Statute of Quia Emptores 1290
R v Earl of Northumberland (1568), known as the Case of mines
Law of Property Act 1925, Land Registration Act 1925 (see also, Land Registration Act 1862)
Land Registration Act 2002 and HM Land Registry
Land tenure in England
Fee simple (freehold)
Concurrent estate and Four unities
Saunders v Vautier (1841) 4 Beav 115
Leasehold
Tulk v Moxhay (1848) 41 ER 1143
Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000
Usucaption
The Port of London Authority v Ashmore [2010] EWCA Civ 30, regarding adverse possession of a river bed.
English personal property law and UK commercial law
The division of property into real and personal represents in a great measure the division into immovable and movable incidentally recognized in Roman law and generally adopted since. "Things personal," according to Blackstone, "are goods, money, and all other movables which may attend the owner's person wherever he thinks proper to go". This identification of things personal with movables, though logical in theory, does not, as will be seen, perfectly express the English law, owing to the somewhat anomalous position of chattels real. In England real property is supposed to be superior in dignity to personal property, which was originally of little importance from a legal point of view.