Did the Catholic Church proscribe private ownership and reading of scripture? I have heard that the Catholic Church did not permit private ownership of scripture nor any attempts to read and understand it so that the only copies were the ones possessed by the Church and the only exegesis of the text was done by the Catholic clergy. Private ownership and interpretation then was a Protestant innovation. Is that accurate information? Or have I been misinformed?

If that is correct, when if ever did the Catholic Church official begin permitting private ownership and interpretation of the scriptures?

I suppose one could add translation by anyone other than the Catholic clergy to this question as well.
Laypeople owned Books of the Hours and illuminated manuscripts of Holy Scripture before the printing press. (See the "Manuscript" Catholic Encyclopedia article for the history of manuscripts and copyists.) There was no ecclesiastical prohibition of such ownership.

St. Paula (347-404), a wealthy Roman lady who could thus afford manuscripts, studied Holy Scripture under the direction of St. Jerome and helped fund St. Jerome's Vulgate translation of the entire Bible. Thus, laypeople privately owning Holy Scriptures did exist very early on in the Church's history.

cf. How did the Catholic Church function logistically/liturgically prior to the invention of the printing press?