The NIEO had made the radical claim that much of the world's knowledge was an inalienable part of the common heritage of mankind. Corporate advocates of IP responded with a claim that was equally radical and equally at odds with mainstream and neoliberal economic discourse: that IP rights were simple analogues of other property rights.

Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, loc. 200