All libertarians favor property rights, and agree that

property rights include rights in tangible resources.

These resources include immovables (realty) such as
land and houses, and movables such as chairs, clubs, cars,
and clocks.

Further, all libertarians support rights in one’s own

body. Such rights may be called “self-ownership” as long as
one keeps in mind that there is dispute about whether such
body-ownership is alienable in the same way that rights in
homesteadable, external objects are alienable. In any event,
libertarians universally hold that all tangible scarce
resources – whether homesteadable or created, immovable
or movable, or our very bodies – are subject to rightful control,
or “ownership,” by specified individuals.

As we move away from the tangible (corporeal) toward

the intangible, matters become fuzzier. Rights to reputations
(defamation laws) and against blackmail, for example,
are rights in very intangible types of things. Most, though
not all, libertarians oppose laws against blackmail, and
many oppose the idea of a right to one’s reputation.

Also disputed is the concept of intellectual property

(herein referred to as IP). Are there individual rights to
one’s intellectual creations, such as inventions or written
works? Should the legal system protect such rights? Below,
I summarize current U.S. law on intellectual property
rights. I then survey various libertarian views on IP rights,
and present what I consider to be the proper view.