Abstract
Prescription is one of the traditional institutes of continental property law. Its roots lie in Roman law, where it was formed together with two fundamental institutes of property law - ownership and possession, which interconnects organically.
Although we commonly referred to prescription as a way of acquiring ownership, this aspect of its existence is more of a consequence than a cause. The purpose of prescription, as Gaius writes, is, in particular, to protect the honest possessor of a thing, as well as to provide legal certainty of property title.
It is in a way the necessity given the construction of ownership in civil law reflected by the difference between ownership, as a right to a thing, and possession, as a de facto power over a thing. The book is about the winding paths of prescription in Roman law as well as in Czechoslovak law of the 20th century and the Czech law of the 21st century.