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Originally Posted by pwalker8
That's fairly misleading. The non-tangible "rights", were the rights to develop tangible objects, i.e. mining right, watering rights and the like. It's pretty hard to come up with something non tangible that was actually used as collateral prior to modern times. [...]
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My OED offers the following pre-Statute of Anne quotes for collateral (sense 5. Law):
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*** 1534 Act 26 Hen. VIII, c. 3 §21 Any colaterall writing or suertie made for such pension. ***1552 Huloet, Collateral bonde, satisdatio. ***1570 Act 13 Eliz. c. 8 §3 Contracts and Assurances, collateral or other. ***1574 tr. Littleton's Tenures 132 a, Called collaterall warrantie. In so much that hee yt made the warrantie is collaterall to the title of the tenementes. ***1607 J. Cowell Interpr. s.v., To bee subject to the feeding of the Kings Deere, is collaterall to the soyle within the Forest. ***1623 in New Shaks. Soc. Trans. (1885) 505 Collaterall Covenauntes bondes and assurances so to bee made.
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Although I must admit when I wrote that last post I was thinking of less formal use of the concept ("he's good for it" sort of thing).
Of course, you are right that those types of rights are underwritten by tangible things, but once you introduce rights in place of the real thing thing you begin to introduce interesting complications. eg: if everyone wants their irrigation water at the same time (which is quite common) then you run into capacity issues. This sort of thing gets people playing fast and loose with timing and other details and we end up with something akin to Pratchett's "pork futures" (well, not really, but hopefully you get what I mean).
I see those early rights not as the same thing as IP rights, but as a necessary lead up to the possibilities of intangibles.