[qtzfz]

You know what makes for more creative challenges? Not being able to use someone else's character.

[Taywee]

The same applies whether it's somebody else's or your own. Is it significantly more creative to continually milk a character you made 40 years ago? How about a character your company made before you even started working there?

[flangola7]

Culturally, Mario doesn't belong to any one person or organization. The idea of ideas being property is strange and alien.

[bitwize]

There are indigenous tribes who assign ownership of stories and songs to particular people/families. Retelling them without ownership or permission warrants punishment.

The idea of ideas being property is as human as anything.

[earthling8118]

The only thing that is human about corporations is the people that make them up. There's a several order of magnitude gap between a few people/families in tribes compared to them.

[bitwize]

The original claim didn't mention anything about corporations.

The idea of ideas being property is, itself, as old as the idea of property.

[RunSet]

My intuition says the notion of property being property had to predate the notion of ideas being property.