The privatisation of knowledge is the culmination of a long and treacherous path. Its twists and turns were already present in Italian City-States and British monarchical rule. As capitalism developed, the control over exclusive private property of the means of production presupposed restricting and subsuming knowledge under the capitalist economic imperatives. Diverse efforts to establish complete control were attempted, but only in the 1990s did intellectual appropriation achieve a comprehensive private character. This historical development often attains philosophical validity. However, those frameworks are not indisputable in-themselves. For this reason, notions of intellectual property under Locke, Kant, and Hegel are examined to provide some more depth to discussions and rationalisations of intellectual property and its privatisation.