OCCUPATION. – It is one of the original modes of acquiring property, indeed the first historically and the most important at the origins of society. It consists in the appropriation of a thing that has no owner (res nullius) with the intention of retaining it as one’s own (animus occupandi). In a technical-legal sense, this type of occupation is the reduction of a res nullius into one’s factual power with a view to making it one’s own by right, with the consequence of acquiring ownership of II. Such an act proves truly capable of concretely establishing the right of property. With occupation, in fact, no right of another is violated, since it concerns things without an owner. Moreover, inherent in it is the animus of possessing the thing for oneself. For this reason, occupation has always been and everywhere been regarded as a sufficient title for acquiring ownership of res nullius.
The ethical foundation of occupation thus lies in the principle of natural law according to which a thing belonging to no one or even abandoned (vacua possessionis) passes to the first occupant.
For moralists, in order for occupation to be a legitimate title for acquiring property, the following conditions must obtain: 1) there must be a suitable object, that is, one that is morally and physically capable of being appropriated and exclusively possessed and over which no other title of ownership already exists (otherwise theft would be perpetrated) and that is in commerce, that is, capable of entering into juridical patrimonial relations; 2) there must be actual and effective taking of possession; this, however, can be physical or moral according to the nature of the thing or according to what positive legal systems prescribe. This appropriation must therefore consist in actual control over the thing; 3) there must be the intention (animus) of making the thing one’s own; without this intention, the object would remain in a person’s hands as it would in any other place, susceptible to new appropriation by anyone.