“You could just as well say that property rights would not exist in the free market, because you need a governmental body to identify, assign and defend them. Patents are not arbitrary monopoly privileges granted by the government; they are the government’s recognition of an individual’s creative efforts and his right to the product of those efforts.” William Dwyer

Tell a bear his cave is not his property because he has no government to legislate it so. Tell a wolf the carcass he’s enjoying is not his property because he has no government to legislate it so.

Property derives from privacy, the individual’s innate power and natural right to exclude others from the spaces they inhabit and the objects they possess. Governments are supposed to secure such exclusive rights – on the basis of equality – as opposed to whoever is the more powerful.

No natural being has an innate power to control what others do with their spoor.

People may covet such power, but that doesn’t make it a natural right.

An author has a natural right to exclude others from their writings, as an inventor has to exclude others from their designs, and this right should be secured by Congress. However, should either author or inventor include another (in their confidence or otherwise) they have no natural power or right to control what that other may do. We lose no liberty in receiving a writing or design.

What takes our liberty away is legislative abridgement, specifically Queen Anne’s annulling of our right to copy in 1709 (and James Madison’s re-enactment in 1790), that this right may be left, by exclusion, in the hands of a few – copyright holders.

So, yes, if a ‘creator’ discloses their invention or writing to you, you are naturally at liberty (as you SHOULD be) to reproduce and/or sell copies as you see fit – no permission needed. Only patent and copyright annul your right to do so. And such liberty is inalienable, i.e. you can’t contract away your right to copy that which someone has given you (though you can contract away that which is alienable, e.g. a security deposit, forfeit upon being found to have made copies).