As the end of the paragraph suggests, property can also be immaterial, but I agree that sentence should be tightened up a bit.
As far as I understand, property comes with varying degrees of excludability and are sometimes not excludable at all (e.g. public property, common property).
A lens on public property is that it’s where the public uses its right to exclude others from taking ownership of the thing. As Sherlock Holmes is in the public domain, I can’t say “Sherlock Holmes is my IP!”, whereas I could say that about characters I invent that aren’t in the public domain. And the public domain doesn’t just extend to things that are currently known; there are whole swaths of intellectual effort where society has decided discoveries cannot be patented.
As the end of the paragraph suggests, property can also be immaterial, but I agree that sentence should be tightened up a bit.
A lens on public property is that it’s where the public uses its right to exclude others from taking ownership of the thing. As Sherlock Holmes is in the public domain, I can’t say “Sherlock Holmes is my IP!”, whereas I could say that about characters I invent that aren’t in the public domain. And the public domain doesn’t just extend to things that are currently known; there are whole swaths of intellectual effort where society has decided discoveries cannot be patented.