Legal rights are a somewhat ephemeral (though important) concept of an entitlement to something that is, or should be, recognised under the law. Such rights can be generated in a number of ways. They can be universal “natural” rights that everyone has by default, or they can be something that is exclusive and expensive, restricted to only those who can afford to pay, or who achieve some specialist position. Most rights are something in between. They can be property rights, qualifications, warranties, promises, or licenses. The variety of possible rights is probably limitless.

It is clear that these rights are not especially substantial in their form. They may be documented on a piece of paper, or in electronic form, such as in the case of a contract, but those records are themselves even more ephemeral than the rights that they confer.

They are also probably not neatly collected in the same place. Some won't be documented at all, some will be in a box that a product came in, and some will be in a filing cabinet. Others will be in the terms and conditions of some website somewhere, or inside some dusty bit of software that you licensed ten years ago. Finding and proving all of these rights would be a huge challenge.

Rights Containerisation is the process of generating legal rights via deeds within ownable cryptographic objects.

Vaulted Objects are an example of such objects. They contain the ability to secure, in addition to the encrypted media which is their more visible component, a new form of valid legal deed.

The deeds have at least two possible forms, within a Vaulted Object.

The first form is a relatively simple title transfer deed. This is included within each Vaulted Object as an essential part of the transfer function, in order to remove any doubt about the legal status of an object once it has been transferred from one user to another.

The second form is perhaps more interesting, in that it is a deed which is able to take any form whatsoever. It is extensible to any situation or circumstance within the contemplation of its author.

A deed is more powerful than a contract, because it is free from the requirement that the counterparty provide consideration. If you wish to gift something to someone, you may want to do that via a deed.

Because deeds are powerful, they are also more difficult to execute. To make a special promise that will legally bind you, the courts want to know that you really meant to, so they developed the concept of the deed execution ceremony. Not only does it require that the promise is evidenced in writing, but it also needs to be signed, sealed and delivered.

Signed, means the executor has attached their signature to the document.

Sealed used to mean that the executor of the deed imprinted their signet ring into hot wax to form a unique seal on the face of the document. This was especially important during times of low literacy levels, and in fact in those days did the job of the wet signature as well. Seals have changed form in modern times.

Delivery is the requirement for the document to be put in the possession of the person to whom the benefit of the deed is conferred, so that the right could be proved.

Only when these three elements are in place can one be said to have validly executed a legal deed.

In more recent times, wax seals have fallen out of fashion. Even before PDF documents and the “paperless office,” seals were routinely replaced by witnesses signing the signature of the grantor of the deed. This was (and is still) considered a suitable replacement, and more compatible with the office technology of the day.

This was a reasonable convenience, until a certain viral pandemic meant that people getting together in a room to witness each other's autograph wasn't actually convenient at all. Deeds signed at this time, without witness of signatures or seals, have questions around their legal validity.

Vaulted Objects contain cryptographic deeds as a matter of course.

Each deed is cryptographically signed by the executor of the deed (generally the creator of the Vaulted Object). The act of the executor applying their signature is attested to by Vaulted Ventures, as the infrastructure operator, who then signs the signature, forming the seal. The deed is then delivered to the recipient/beneficiary of the deed and is downloaded to their device, so that they unambiguously take possession of the deed.

In this way, we provide a direct analogue of the traditional deed execution ceremony, only in a digital cryptographic form. The digital deed will therefore have the same legal effect as the traditional written and correctly executed deed.