You're conflating tangible with the intangible. Land ownership stems from natural law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na

You're conflating tangible with the intangible. Land ownership stems from natural law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law Animals are territorial and that's really the end of that. However, the idea of owning an idea ... that's a legal construct and a very recent one at that. The idea of owning an idea would be entirely foreign to someone a thousand years ago. And the idea that you have a moral claim on owning an idea is just patently absurd, for a very simple reason. You have no means of proving one way or another that you were the first person to have that very thought. It is entirely possible someone else had it long before you. What claim to ownership can you have? Because you commercialized the idea first? Most countries are moving to a "first to file" system to simplify bureaucracy, so now your moral claim is contingent not even on your business acumen, but on your ability to quickly fill out a form.