C4SIF.org

Adapted from a Twitter post:

The banality of evil on full display: IP shill and buffoon Gene Quinn (https://t.co/pkD0AX0r0f) and clueless technocrat Darren Tang of WIPO (https://t.co/dW9FMao9M7) mirthfully yapping along and praising “IP as a Force for Good”. Πάτερ, ἄφες αὐτοῖς, οὐ γὰρ οἴδασιν τί…

— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) September 15, 2025

[continue reading…]

@witheredsummer has fed a bunch of my and others’ anti-IP writing into Google’s Notebook LM to create an AI to answer IP questions: the Anti-IP Bible. Here’s one example:

IP is bad, actually, and @NSKinsella is right in every single thing he has ever written about IP, and if you disagree you’re a socialist. pic.twitter.com/bxksLqyEFc

— Kadaververwertungsanstalt (@witheredsummer) September 12, 2025

The IP clause in the US Constitution authorizes Congress to enact patent law by authorizing it “to promote the Progress of . . . useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to . . . Inventors the exclusive Right to their . . . Discoveries.” The Patent Act does this by the so-called “patent bargain“:

The disclosure requirement lies at the heart and origin of patent law. An inventor, or the inventor’s assignee, is granted a monopoly for a given period of time in exchange for the inventor disclosing to the public how to make or practice their invention. If a patent fails to contain such information, then the bargain is violated, and the patent is unenforceable or can be revoked.

In other words, to get the state to issue you a roughly 17-year monopoly privilege, or patent, you have to publicly disclose your invention in the patent disclosure document instead of keeping it secret in the form of a trade secret. This way, once your patent expires, the invention is in the public domain and others who were prevented from competing with you and using this information during the term of the patent are now free to use it.¹

Now it is true that Rand found a way to justify patents being limited in time in her essay “Patents and Copyrights.” (Ironically, or perhaps not, the version of this essay previously online has been removed, with this BS excuse: “Per our agreement with publishers, to make room for other Ayn Rand non-fiction content, this essay has been temporarily removed, but will return in due course.” Shades of Galambos!)² However, she did view patent rights as property rights to which the inventor is entitled. As she wrote, “The government does not “grant” a patent or copyright, in the sense of a gift, privilege, or favor; the government merely secures it—i.e., the government certifies the origination of an idea and protects its owner’s exclusive right of use and disposal.” So it occurs to me that a principled Randian who also knows something about how patent law works—most of them do not and do not even know the difference between the different types of IP that they mindlessly support³ —would take umbrage at the patent disclosure requirement (and would thus be happy at how it has been watered down to remove penalties for failing to disclose the best mode).⁴

In other words, if an inventor is entitled to a 17-year patent on his invention, why should he be forced to publicly disclose the details of the invention? Why can’t he just submit it to the PTO, have it examined, but have the disclosure kept secret, as it is now possible to do if the applicant certifies it will not be filed in a foreign country that requires publication? (See Grok summary.) It is true that the inventor can request non-publication but this is only if he gives up the right to file in other countries. Why should he be forced to give up this right? Ideally, shouldn’t every country grant patents to inventors without requiring them to publish it?

In fact, ideally, we would have a one-world government, right?⁵— and thus only one patent system, thus saving inventors the headache and cost of filing in dozens of other countries, which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per patent. (See Grok estimate.) Another benefit of one-world government: cheaper IP acquisition and enforcement costs! You only have to file one copyright or patent infringement lawsuit against your competitors! Yaayy!

But seriously, why don’t Randians whine about the patent disclosure requirement as the price they have to pay to get the patent that they deserve? Why don’t they oppose the patent bargain? I think none of them really even understand IP law, and their ideas on IP are so jumbled and confused they don’t even realize why they should oppose it.

1. For more on the disclosure requirement and the patent bargain, see Mark Lemley: The Very Basis Of Our Patent System… Is A Myth; America Invents Act provides patent marking relief (this is not good); Defensive Patent Publishing; Mike Masnick, Why Do Patents Tend To Cause More Harm Than Good?; Masnick, Can We Get Rid Of The Disclosure Myth For Patents? [↩]
2.  “Around this time I met the Galambosian.” [↩]
3. See comments about Orbaugh in KOL458 | Patent and Copyright versus Innovation, Competition, and Property Rights (APEE Guatemala 2025). [↩]
4. As noted in America Invents Act provides patent marking relief (this is not good), the disclosure requirement has already been watered down by virtually eliminating the best mode defense: if the patentee fails to disclose the best mode, the patent cannot be invalidated or the failure used as a defense by a victim of a patent extortion lawsuit. [↩]
5. Rand, Objectivism, and One-World Government; Objectivism, Bidinotto, and Anarchy.  [↩]

I’ve discussed before the error of libertarian or Lockean “creationism” that underlies one of the main arguments for intellectual property. See: [continue reading…]

Below is an except from Stop Regulating Games, A Withered Remnant, by @witheredsummer:

The Real Problem: Intellectual Property

Multiple times I hinted at this before, but finally, we got here. Intellectual property is, simply put, the root of all these problems. I am not here to explain the philosophical problems of intellectual property, for that you should read Stephan Kinsella’s Against Intellectual Property, and, if you’d like to learn more about the real-world impact of intellectual property, you could read my essay, Ideas Are Free: A Case Against Intellectual Property. [continue reading…]

• KOL472 | “What Is Property? And What Is Not? — Part 2 — Fireside Chat on Intellectual Property with Albert Lu,” Capitalism & Morality (Vancouver)
• KOL471 | “What Is Property? And What Is Not? — Part 1,” Capitalism & Morality (Vancouver)

From X:

Dear Mr Kinsella,

Thank you for your work in libertarianism. I have several questions for you, and I hope you have the time to check them out.

1. In your opinion, in an ideal libertarian world without state-enforced IP, how would we deal with piracy of content (movies, sports livestreams, music, etc.). Would it be purely resolved contractually? If a lot of information and entertainment is spread through code and radio waves, does that mean it cannot be ‘property’ because two people can use a radio wave or line of code without infringing on each other? What am I missing here?

[continue reading…]

Related:

• Intellectual Property and Think Tank Corruption

I’ve pointed out before how too many allegedly free market groups are pro-patent (and pro-IP in general).¹ And many were pro-vaccine and pro-lockdowns,² and of course many are not only pro-pharmaceuticals but outright shills for Big Pharma. Their support for patents is one reason many supposed free market advocates even oppose free trade in drugs and drug reimportation:³ it would undercut the monopoly prices Big Pharma is able to charge US consumers of drugs—the price is inflated not only because of unnecessary, artificial FDA costs, and because of US pharmaceutical patents, but also because FDA regulation and import controls restrict the importation of cheaper but identical drugs sold abroad for lower prices (due to local price controls or price discrimination).⁴ The Federalist Society,⁵ Cato, Independent Institute, and others, are all disappointing on IP. Independent Institute senior fellow William Shughart, for example,⁶ has embarrassingly argued: [continue reading…]

1. Intellectual Property and Think Tank Corruption. [↩]
2. Tucker, Why Elite Libertarians Failed so Miserably on COVID; What Kind of Libertarian Are You? (collecting various Cato pro-vaccine/covid lockdown views). Even my old friend Walter Block went awol on this issue, as did many others. See A Tour Through Walter Block’s Oeuvre. [↩]
3. Cato Tugs Stray Back Onto Reservation (archive); Cato on Drug Reimportation; Cato Tugs Stray Back Onto the Reservation; and Other Posts; Jude Blanchette’s The Reimportation Controversy; Protectionist Cato?; Drug Patents and Welfare; see also Epstein and Patents and Richard Epstein on “The Structural Unity of Real and Intellectual Property”; The Structural Unity of Real and Intellectual Property; Tabarrok and Murphy: Why Are US Drug Prices So High?; KOL469 | Haman Nature Hn 149: Tabarrok on Patents, Price Controls, and Drug Reimportation. [↩]
4. Copyright has also impeded the ability to use imports to engage in international arbitrage in the case of text books, at least until Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (2013) clarified matters. [↩]
5. More defenses of IP by the Federalist Society; James Stern: Is Intellectual Property Actually Property? [Federalist Society No. 86 LECTURE]; Anti-IP Material Needed in the IP Section of the Federalist Society’s “Conservative & Libertarian Legal Scholarship: Annotated Bibliography”; Federalist Society Asks: What’s the Right Amount of Censorship?; Federalist Society Panel: Undermining or Preserving Property Rights? The New Administrative Patents. Though they have featured me on occasion, to their credit. Federalist Society IP Debate (Ohio State); KOL253 | Berkeley Law Federalist Society: A Libertarian’s Case Against Intellectual Property; KOL235 | Intellectual Property: A First Principles Debate (Federalist Society POLICYbrief). [↩]
6. In “Ideas Need Protection: Abolishing Intellectual-property Patents Would Hurt Innovation: A Middle Ground Is Needed” (archive). [↩]

From the Mises Blog years ago: Robert P. Murphy, “(Minor) Criticisms of Kinsella,” 5/05/2005: and my reply in the comments section. Archived comments below.

For an Austrian II class we read Kinsella’s famous “Against Intellectual Property.” I generally found it to be every bit worth the hype, but naturally I can’t help but offer a few criticisms. I do so here on this blog because I don’t know of a more appropriate forum: [continue reading…]

The All-In podcast (@theallinpod) hosts Chamath Palihapitiya (@chamath), Jason Calacanis (@Jason), David Sacks (@DavidSacks), and David Friedberg (@friedberg) screw up yet another IP discussion. (See All-In Podcast Concern over China and IP “Theft”.) This time they sense how copyright is going to screw up IP and want some changes, but… not enough. This is one of these examples of Brandolini’s Law (the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle); it would take about 30 pages to debunk all their confusions about IP (Calacanis claims to know it more than the others but he mangles it too; none of them understand IP law); they conflate patents, copyright, trademark, stealing, plagiarism, and contracts/terms of service;¹ they are confused about independent invention, originality, authorship, what China is doing,² and on on… they are just all over the map. [continue reading…]

1. Stop calling patent and copyright “property”; stop calling copying “theft” and “piracy”; Copying, Patent Infringement, Copyright Infringement are not “Theft”, Stealing, Piracy, Plagiarism, Knocking Off, Ripping Off. [↩]
2. The China Stealing IP Myth. [↩]

As I have noted previously, the two most harmful types of IP, patent and copyright,¹ have gotten increasingly worse since their inception in 1790, with few exceptions. Originally the term was about 14 years for each (based on the idea of protecting the master from competition from his apprentices for the arbitrary period of two 7-year apprentice terms).² Patents are now about 17 years (20 years from date of filing, with about 3 years for prosecution being typical), and the scope has expanded somewhat, to cover business methods and computer software (even though software is also now covered by copyright, as it is a form of “expression,” but should’t be, as it is functional, hence the possibility of patents on software inventions).³ Congress has has expanded the term several times over the decades from 14 years renewable once, to, incredibly, the life of the author plus seventy years. Copyright  originally covered books, maps, charts; it now covers subject matter either because of new developments and judicial recgnognition or by legislation now covering things like musical compositions (sheet music), photographs, motion pictures, sound recordings, compilations (databases), computer programs (software), and even “look and feel.”⁴ [continue reading…]

1. “Patent vs. Copyright: Which is Worse?”; The Overwhelming Empirical Case Against Patent and Copyright; “The Death Throes of Pro-IP Libertarianism” (Mises Daily 2010); IP Answer Man: Death Toll of Patent Law; “Death by Copyright-IP Fascist Police State Acronym”; “Masnick on the Horrible PROTECT IP Act: The Coming IPolice State”; posts tagged under Patents kill. [↩]
2.   Where did the patent term come from?; Optimal Patent and Copyright Term Length; see also Thomas Jefferson’s Proposal to Limit the Length of Patent and Copyright in the Bill of Rights.  [↩]
3. KOL409 | IP Law Tutorial, Part 1: Patent Law; Grok report. [↩]
4. KOL411 | IP Law Tutorial, Part 2: Copyright Law; Grok report. [↩]

KOL469 | Haman Nature Hn 149: Tabarrok on Patents, Price Controls, and Drug Reimportation. Read more>>

Related:

•  Jeffrey A. Tucker on Intellectual Property
• From It’s a Jetsons World (Mises Institute, 2012): [continue reading…]