I understand the question to be: “why does cultural folklore, passed from person-to-person through the ages, fall into the public domain, in modern conception of intellectual property?”

If that is the question, then the answer is multi-fold: firstly, since folklore predates any organized notion of private rights to certain renditions of an idea (aka intellectual property), they are grandfathered in.

But supposing that making an exception for folklore or mythology isn’t palatable, the practical issue is: who would own said intellectual property for a particular myth? Property – in the Anglo-American sense – must have an owner. Even public property like parks and highways has an owner: the state. Without an owner, assigning intellectual property rights for myths is a pointless exercise.

And finally, remember that intellectual property does not cover ideas per-se, but their rendition in some tangible or concrete form. A book, a movie, an MP3 file, etc. If it’s solely an idea without a creation to go with it – or for patents, the plausibility of producing such a creation – then intellectual property rights cannot attach.

Old

I would say because a lot of mythology comes from the oral tradition of storytelling, passed from person to person and age to age via spoken word and memory.

There’s actually a SUPERB podcast about Greek mythology, called Podyssey. It’s tremendously interesting, and the host, Alex Andreou, just did a 3 part epic on Aesop, both the person (or rather the ‘person’) and the Fables.

Well worth a listen, either just that one, or the whole show tbh.

Can you explain what you mean?

There’s also the difficulty of a identifying any originator, since “mythology” usually means many versions known by many people, and is typically an oral tradition before being printed