Intellectual property rights are important to a free enterprise system because they: A. ensure that all companies benefit equally from new ideas.
B. help governments set prices for essential products.
C. prevent the courts from interfering with private businesses.
D. prevent companies from stealing ideas from innovators.

D.  prevent companies from stealing ideas from innovators.

Explanation:

Ideas/inventions alone are not enough to be successful in business. People also need to have the capital and connections necessary to be able to sell the products that they invented to the market.

Without Intellectual property rights, massive corporations could just take away  game changing ideas/inventions from the smaller innovators and beat their sales in the market simply because they have larger capital. (These massive corporations could spent a lot more money for things such as advertising and mass productions .)

This is why intellectual property rights are important. So new businesses are not discouraged to invent a new/better product and join the existing competition in the market.

answer; the sons of liberty;