Ownership of documents locks the documents, giving the owners the opportunity to check in the next revision and to block other users from checking them in. However, owners can check in documents only if they also have read/write access for the next revision, which may depend on lifecycle status. Ownership does not imply read/write access or guarantee the ability to check in the next revision.
You can change ownership of a document from the vault view.
To take ownership, you must have write permission to the project containing the document and the document must not be owned by someone else. Unlike Get Local Copy and Open Document, taking ownership does not copy the document to your local drive. Vault administrators can allow or block users from taking ownership based on the document's revision level if they have read-only access to documents.
You can release ownership of a document without checking it in, allowing another user to take ownership or check out the document.
To change ownership of a document: