“The notion that copyright and patents constituted ‘property’ was unknown to the Founders.”
I was not talking about nomenclature. You can say the constitutional “exclusive right” to inventions is not property, but in modern terminology, ownership is implied.
IP is not a direct extension of natural law in the way real property ownership is. It is somewhat of a social contract whereby we elect representatives who establish the applicable IP law and make treaties whereby inventions can be exploited in other nations as well.
And I was not talking nomenclature either. As a believer in Constitutional copyright and patents (sort of like Constitutional carry for the protection of writings instead for the bearing of arms), I object to the reification of a government granted monopoly as “property” that can be bought or sold. The Founders’ language admits no such interpretation — to authors and inventors it says — and current copyright law is as much an abuse of the Constitution as FDR’s National Recovery Act or Obamacare.