Joseph Stiglitz, "Knowledge as a Global Public Good," in Global Public Goods: International Cooperation in the 21st Century, Inge Kaul, Isabelle Grunberg, Marc A. Stern (eds.), United Nations Development Programme, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 308-325.
It's in the sense that the current implementation of idea ownership is mostly a ham-fisted exercise in rent-seeking. Ideas work best when left to spread, mix, and be freely used.
It's a complex topic, really - on the one hand, you have the boneheaded stupidity of software patents, or of music and movie licensing (that have little to do with compensating original authors and performers, and is instead about middlemen getting rent); but on the other hand, you have drug research and $manybillion silicon fabs, which kind of require IP protection even exist.