Signed in 2039 by the Meridian Consortium and the forty-one states that wanted cheap power more than they wanted to read the small print. It let the Ring be built. It is also the reason the Consortium can say, with a straight face, that a girder lying in someone’s field in 2107 is corporate property.
The Ring at its height, 2060s. Every component of it, by Article 4, the Consortium’s.What it says
Three articles matter. Article 4 vests title to every component of an orbital structure in the party that financed and built it, without limit of time or location. Article 9 exempts such components from salvage law, which until then had given the finder of a wreck a claim on it. Article 12 binds the signatory states to enforce the first two.
At the time the articles were read as a guarantee that nobody would nationalise the Ring once it was working. Nobody wrote down what would happen if it stopped working and landed on the signatories.
Title to orbital structures
Title to any structure, component, module or material placed in orbit under this Accord shall vest in the Party that financed and constructed it, and shall not be extinguished by the passage of time, by change of location, by loss of function, or by descent to the surface of the Earth.
No Party and no non-Party shall acquire title to such structure, component, module or material by possession, by finding, by salvage, or by operation of any national law.
Ratified 2039 · 41 states · deposited at Geneva
Why it still matters
The Consortium’s whole legal position in the Salvage War is Article 4. The League’s whole political position is that an accord signed to build a power station cannot govern the rubble of a catastrophe, and that the states which signed it mostly no longer exist. Both sides are right that the text says what it says.