People want to protect the fruits of their labour. That's how the concept of property came into being. If you acquire a piece of land, a piece of jewellery, or a box of silver by virtue of your hard work, law gives you a property right on it. The property right enables you to not only own, possess, and alienate the subject/piece of property, but also the right to commercialise it, rent it, license it etc.
But, what if the thing your labour produced cannot be touched or seen? What if it's a poem, or a story, or an invention? That's when Intellectual Property Rights come into play.
IPRs enable you to own your ideas, although metaphorically. Patents protect the inventiveness of your innovations, copyrights protect the originality in your creations, and trademarks protect the distinguishability in your brand logos.
But that's not all. The field of IPRs is constantly evolving allowing you to protect more and more intangible things. For example, did you know that you can protect sounds under the Trademark Law? Or, that NFTs aren't copyright licenses in strict sense?