Natural Rights, Scarcity & Intellectual Property
Property rights are a fundamental aspect of all classical liberal and libertarian philosophies. Within these ideological paradigms, there is little disagreement over the concept of selfownership and property rights in tangible goods. But when looking to property rights in non-tangible or ideal objects—like those granted by copyright, patent, and trademark law—a considerable disagreement can be seen within the classical liberal approach.1
If we look to positions of various libertarian and classical liberal writers, we see a range of conclusions concerning how ideas and their applications should be protected under a system of law. This paper takes a natural rights approach to the consideration of property in general, and investigates the reasons why the consensus on rights to tangible property exists and why it breaks down when applied to ideal or intangible property. Beginning with the Lockean foundation of the natural right to self-ownership and personal property, and continuing into the application of these ideas to intangible and ideal objects, this paper concludes that scarcity is the fundamental difference between these two types of resources. The lack of scarcity in ideal objects destroys any perceived natural rights foundation to intellectual property.
