 Consider the following case. Imagine that we have two intellectual property creators, Beren and Lúthien, and two possible outcomes for each. In a single-play prisoner’s dilemma game, each player can copy an intellectual creation of the other, or not. Assume as well that the intellectual works created by Beren and Lúthien are valuable, interesting, or desired. The best case for either player is one where their own intellectual creation is not copied and yet they get to copy the work of the other player. This is ‘best’ for the player who copies and ‘worst’ for the player who doesn’t because, (1) the player who copies gets to enjoy or consume more content compared to the other player, (2) the player who copies still has the option or possibility of obtaining benefit by selling, trading, or bartering with the other player, while the non-copier does not enjoy these possibilities — this provides a way to recoup research and development costs, and (3) via selling, trading, or bartering the copier may obtain a positional advantage and more capital for future exchanges compared to the non-copier. Simply put, the copier obtains more content and retains more opportunities to sell, barter, or exchange compared to the non-copier. If Beren and Lúthien both refrain from copying each other, then each will avoid the worst outcome in terms of recouping investment costs and being at a positional disadvantage. Both will also retain the option of buying or bartering for the non-copied content the other enjoys. This payoff is ‘okay,’ better than ‘worst’ but not as good as ‘best.’ If both Beren and Lúthien copy each other, then both will get extra content to enjoy and will not be put at a positional disadvantage, but each will be denied the possibility of recouping research and development costs. The other player will not buy or barter for content he already possesses. These payoffs mirror a prisoner’s dilemma game (Axelrod 198, 1984, Skyrms 1990, Binmore 2015, Holt, Johnson and Schmidtz 2015).