> The court found the contracts aren't property because no one can control or change the application's code any longer. In fact, the creators took pains to make sure of that.

Hmmm... Hunting for analogies, perhaps it's like an event where people arrive at the park, everybody puts a fixed $20 in their own opaque anonymous box, and everyone blindly shuffles boxes before leaving with (probably) someone else's box, thus cross-shuffling their money/coins.

Sure, the $20 before and after is property, but the event itself isn't really own-able in the same way.