I think, "license" as it pertains to say licensing a technology from another company is different then the more consumer-based use of the term for licensing software- but they are definitely similar- with a copy of windows or most software, for example, your really paying for the license to use the software, rather then the software itself. Since, in actuality you can do whatever you wished with the contents of the CD, I think that in a very basic way you "own" the CD and it's contents.
I think, the license, more or less pertains to the source code and related libraries and so forth; and in the case of the Java VM, Sun had specific licensing requirements that basically said that the licensee could do whatever they pleased with their VM, as long as it adhered to a specific set of standards, most of which were in place to make sure that the Virtual Machines were consistent across platforms. For example, All VM's implement garbage collection, because it's part of the specification; However, within that limit the creators of the VM could do what they pleased to implement that garbage collection; for example, many VMs use something called "mark and sweep" which goes through the list of objects in memory, and marks those that are unused; then goes through again and disposes of those objects that were marked. Others, for example, the Microsoft VM did this, if I recall, was called "Stop and copy" and was pretty similar, however, instead of going through twice, the objects are looped through just once, and all active objects are copied to a new memory location, the old one is deallocated, and the new one copied back into it's place. this method is faster but more memory intensive (heh, MS always goes for the faster but more memory consuming options...)
In a way, it's similar to the Patent on the GIF/LZW file format that is held my Compuserve/Unisys; a license. which allows you to implement the algorithm legally, is prohibitively expensive, but it really isn't that hard to implement the code; it uses LZW compression, which is a very common and well documented format; basically the patent covers how the file is organized rather then how it is compressed, which is a kind of lame thing to patent. it would be like patenting a living room layout and then charging people who used that layout a "licensing fee".
The way I like to think of it, is that, Owning it, is when you have, and legally obtained, the source code to the product. licensing the product usually means that the company gives you precompiled OBJ files that you can link into your program.
Of course this line is blurred when the licensee is actually given a license for the actual source code. I believe Russia has the source code for windows to meet some sort of esoteric government rule regulating software; but does this mean that Russia owns windows? Well, not really. They just wanted it probably to make sure there wasn't any anti-communist stuff embedded in it, not to modify it.
I added that "obtained legally" bit for obvious reasons; take the Half-Life 2 Source code leak; it was obtained illegally; but without that clause it would fit under the definition of ownership.
Another definition is who wrote it, which, IMO is the fairest of all, but is too cumbersome to implement. Big companies that have thousands of employees usually have their employees sign a contract which basically signs over anything they write programming-wise to be owned by the company; this includes stuff they write at home. (In my opinion this is dangerously close to breaching some form of human right, (freedom to... express themselves? I don't know... just seems odd). This means that all the source is owned by the company rather then the original writer of the source, which also, seems fair since the company in general paid them to write the program/module.
The real issue with such a setup is when the same programmer writes a utility or small program for public consumption. Before they are able to release it, they literally need to get their own source code given to them, since, because of the aforementioned agreement the company owns it. In general this is to avoid, for example, a company releasing a program, and then one of the employees releasing a competing program that uses portions of the companies code (which may include the work of their co-workers); however because of the wide coverage of the contract a company could practically silence all the work of a programmer except for that done for the company. (the programmer can of course release them anonymously)
