Presumably he meant IP ownership or something along those lines.
To his other point, take homes have their own problems, especially for anything beyond the most trivial 2-3 task. That said, there are certainly many jobs where you want to see concrete evidence of ability. I'm not going to hire someone for a job that involves a lot of writing without seeing some writing samples. And if they don't have anything they can show me for confidentiality reasons, I'm going to ask them to produce something.
To his other point, take homes have their own problems, especially for anything beyond the most trivial 2-3 task. That said, there are certainly many jobs where you want to see concrete evidence of ability. I'm not going to hire someone for a job that involves a lot of writing without seeing some writing samples. And if they don't have anything they can show me for confidentiality reasons, I'm going to ask them to produce something.