On the expiration of a patent or copyright, the intellectual property involved does not become “public property” (though it is labeled as “in the public domain”); it ceases to exist qua property. And if the invention or the book continues to be manufactured, the benefit of that former property does not go to the “public,” it goes to the only rightful heirs: to the producers, to those who exercise the effort of embodying that idea in new material forms and thus keeping it alive.

- Ayn Rand. Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966).