To facilitate this, a record of title documents may be maintained by a registry office or civil law notary.
In the United States, some holders of mortgage debt may be unable to establish chain of title, despite the fact that clear chain of title can be required by the mortgage holder before foreclosure can proceed.
Widespread lack of clarity in chain of title results from a 1995 decision by many lenders to rely on a third entity—often, a specific company, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS)--to hold title nominally, in an effort to enable the buying and selling of mortgage liabilities without registration of changes of ownership with local governments.
[2] In the motion picture industry, the chain of title involves the series of documentation which establishes proprietary rights in a film.
The chain also applies to compilations in other fields, where many people have contributed to the project, thus acquiring authorship rights, or where materials were culled from many sources.