Professor Heidi Gorovitz Robertson has published an article titled, Who owns a space rock that landed in a privately owned Swedish forest? in the Real Estate Law Journal, a Thompson Reuters peer-reviewed publication.  The article is available at 54 Real Est. L.J. 47 (Summer 2025).

The article abstract provides:

Questions pertaining to property rights in natural resources have moved beyond the areas above and beneath Earth’s surface to outer space itself. In November 2020, an iron meteorite fell from the sky and landed randomly on privately owned forest land, outside of Enköping, Sweden. Two geologists entered the land, found the meteorite and removed it from the land. The landowner did not challenge the geologists’ right to walk or explore his land, but he believed they had illegally removed the meteorite. Sweden’s longstanding customary right of public access to privately owned land (allemansrätt) means that persons other than the landowner have the right both to enter the land and to collect and remove some natural resources from it. This usually is explained with examples of visitors removing wild berries or mushrooms. A visitor cannot take away cultivated crops or items that are the “immovable” property of the landowner.

What about a meteorite? A meteorite is not much like a cultivated crop. But neither is it much like a wild growing berry. Is it an object that is the personal or immovable property of the landowner? It certainly was not such propertybefore it landed randomly on the landowner’s forest. Did it become the landowner’s property merely by arriving there from outer space?

The Uppsala, Sweden, district court (a trial court) held that, the meteorite was a moveable object, thus more like wild berries than cultivated crops. This meant that, under the right of public access (allemansrätten), the geologists were entitled not only to enter the land, but also to remove the rock. The landowner appealed.

The Svea Court of Appeals overturned the lower court holding that meteorites are ‘immovable property’. This court said that because the iron meteorite landed on property that also contains iron, the meteorite could not easily be distinguished from the land. Hence, although the geologists were allowed to enter the land, they were not entitled to remove the meteorite.

In the context of the Swedish courts’ decisions applying allemansrätten to the recovered meteorite, this article will consider whether a space rock that lands on private land should be the immovable property of the landowner, whether it should be moveable property and thus available to be taken by visitors, or whether another theory of property ownership would better apply. It will consider and apply classic theories of property ownership such as the first possession, fruits of labor, utilitarian, civic republicanism, and personhood theories.

Upon petition by the geologists, the case currently is under review by the Supreme Court of Sweden.

Professor Robertson is the Steven W. Percy Professor of Law at CSU|Law and Professor of Environmental Studies at the Levin College of Public Affairs and Education, Cleveland State University.