Transfer of ownership

In order to transfer ownership over a specific element and its children, two things must happen:

The new owner receives ownership.
The old owner removes their ownership.

Initial state

The current owner has ownership over the element, while the new owner has not:

Adding new owners

The new owner is granted explicit ownership of the element by creating an OWNS-relation:

curl \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer secret-token:PIPeJGUt7c00ENn8a5uDlc' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
        "type": "OWNS",
        "start": "<uuid of new owner>",
        "end": "<uuid of element"
      }' \
  https://api.example.com/

Removing old owners

First find out which ownership claims exist:

curl \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer secret-token:PIPeJGUt7c00ENn8a5uDlc' \
  'https://api.example.com/<uuid of element>/parents'

{
  "type": "_PartialCollection",
  "id": "/<uuid of element>/parents",
  "totalNodes": 1,
  "links": {
    "first": "/<uuid of element>/parents",
    "previous": null,
    "next": null,
    "last": "/<uuid of element>/parents"
  },
  "nodes": [
    {
      "type": "User",
      "id": "<uuid of old user>",
      "data": {
        "created": "2025-09-27T10:26:49+00:00",
        "updated": "2025-09-27T10:26:49+00:00"
      }
    },
    {
      "type": "User",
      "id": "<uuid of new user>",
      "data": {
        "created": "2026-07-27T10:26:49+00:00",
        "updated": "2026-07-27T10:26:49+00:00"
      }
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "type": "OWNS",
      "id": "0c4cabca-a519-4ace-9b7b-2f4d57c31259",
      "start": "<uuid of old owner>",
      "end": "<uuid of element>",
      "data": {
        "created": "2025-09-27T10:26:49+00:00",
        "updated": "2025-09-27T10:26:49+00:00"
      }
    },
    {
      "type": "OWNS",
      "id": "0d1817ab-9c6e-4052-8a1c-6913163cfff3",
      "start": "<uuid of new owner>",
      "end": "<uuid of element>",
      "data": {
        "created": "2026-07-27T10:26:49+00:00",
        "updated": "2026-07-27T10:26:49+00:00"
      }
    }
  ]
}

You then look for the uuid of the OWNS-relation between the old owner and the element, in this case it is 0c4cabca-a519-4ace-9b7b-2f4d57c31259.

This relation can then be deleted:

curl -X DELETE \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer secret-token:PIPeJGUt7c00ENn8a5uDlc' \
  https://api.example.com/0c4cabca-a519-4ace-9b7b-2f4d57c31259

The graph will then look like this:

And the old owner can no longer access the element - unless he has access to it through alternative paths.

Notes

In order to remove ownership claims, you need to have enough permissions to a) read the ownership claim in the first place and b) have write permissions to delete it.
If you want to transfer ownership from you to someone else, you have to remove your claim after you transferred it. Otherwise, you do not have enough permissions to complete the transfer.
Removing the last owner from an element can result in dangling sub-graphs, which are no longer accessible by any user. These elements can only be rescued by interacting with the underlying database directly, i.e. adding new OWNS- relations with all the required data (id). Only administrators can do this, but even then this approach is not recommended.
Removal of an OWNS-relation does not necessarily mean that one user can no longer access the element, as there might be alternative paths to access the element:
- Access through different groups, parallel OWNS-relations etc.
- Limited access through non-ownership-permissions, e.g. HAS_READ_ACCESS.
- Limited access through CREATED-relations.