Legal Definitions - specificatio

Specification is the process of making something new from existing materials. For example, making wine from grapes or a ship from timber. In Roman and civil law, it is a way of acquiring new property by transforming existing property.

There was a disagreement in classical law about who owned the new property created through specification. Justinian, a Roman emperor, said that the maker owned the new property if it was irreducible to its former state and a new thing entirely.

For example, if someone takes wood from another person's property and builds a new table, the table is the result of specification. The person who made the table owns it because it is a new thing and cannot be turned back into the original wood.