The term carries a bias that is not hard to see: it suggests thinking
about copyright, patents and trademarks by analogy with property
rights for physical objects. (This analogy is at odds with the legal
philosophies of copyright law, of patent law, and of trademark law,
but only specialists know that.) These laws are in fact not much like
physical property law, but use of this term leads legislators to
change them to be more so. Since that is the change desired by the
companies that exercise copyright, patent and trademark powers, the
bias of “intellectual property” suits them.