From your link:
Still another forceful exhibit in the case in favor of intellectual property rights comes from Ayn Rand, always a lightning rod and, like Spooner, an outspoken champion of copyright and patent protections. Indeed, Rand tracks Spooner quite closely in her conception of the proper basis for private property, which she argues is “a man’s right to the product of his mind.” “What the patent and copyright laws acknowledge,” Rand argues, “is the paramount role of mental effort in the production of material values.” Without such laws, true competition is compromised insofar as the first in time inventor, the “winner of the race,” is not protected—the “the potential” is mistaken for the “the actual.” In service of her defense of patents and copyrights, Rand draws a distinction between a “scientific or philosophical discovery” and an invention, the latter representing “only … the practical application of knowledge.” Intellectual property is only legitimate, in Rand’s view, because it protects creators in their fabrication of concrete things that did not previously exist in nature.
