What you want is also what I want for the product, it's just a matter of time.
1.I would like to have the product owner take ownership of the initial description and I would like to restrict them to only 1 have one product entry. Is that possible with JReview/Joomla and if so, any thoughts on how that can be done?
If a user submits a listing, then the listing is already his. If you want to assign ownership of a listing to a user, you can do that in the Joomla content manager in the backend. I hope that this can be made easier with jReviews later on.
2. I would like the product owner to be able to have the capability to add a rebuttal to a review received. It is similar to eBay's feedback system. Is it possible to extend the system w/o touching the encrypted backend file?
If I were to do this for another component and required it to have backend access, which it does not necessarily need, I would create a separate backend altogether. This is so that if you need to upgrade at any point in time you can easily do this. So to answer your question, sure you can add this capability without touching the backend. If you wanted to moderate the replies. You could either (1) Create a special mod screen accessible through the frontend only by admins/superadmins (many components do this) or 2) Create a separate backend screen for your mod.
3. Whenever the product receives a new rating, an email notification should be sent to the product owner.
You can easily add this. This has been requested before and it will be added, but not for the next release.
