"But what are the inherent rights of the creator of an intellectual work over his product?"<p>Inherent <i>rights</i>?<p>I want to agree with you that a person who thinks up something and makes it concrete in some form has some special claim on that, but I'm hard pressed to explain how that would be, other than other people all agreeing that is how it should be.    That is, it's not a right, but a social convention.