C4SIF.org

From PFS Blog: Fhoer: The Death of Physical Media: The Digital Panopticon and the Attack on Property

From @Fhoer_here, “The Death of Physical Media,” Fhoer’s Substack (July 16, 2026): “The Digital Panopticon and the Attack on Property.” According to the author: The end of physical media can be blamed on IP laws…

The planned obsolescence of physical media and the forced migration to cloud storage are often celebrated as the pinnacle of modern logistical convenience. The illusion of a frictionless world is sold, where entire libraries and collections fit in the palm of your hand. However, behind this supposed logistical utopia, a profound reconfiguration of property rights is at work. The disappearance of the physical format is not merely a technological advancement, but a structural maneuver designed to make it difficult for individuals to maintain their own collections, separate from the network and beyond the reach of state-corporate scrutiny and control.

To understand the gravity of this movement, it is imperative to observe the problem through the lens of intellectual property criticism. In a natural order, the concept of property applies exclusively to scarce goods, that is, physical resources over which conflicts may arise, such as a piece of land, a printed book, or a hard drive. Information, in turn, is not scarce; thus, the act of copying a file does not deprive the original author of its ownership.

Read more>>

Max C. Sterling, “Property: What Is It?,” Exit Now (June 28, 2026). Nice piece. Grok summary of the article and our interchange below.

Related

• Libertarian Answer Man: Self-Ownership for Slaves and Crusoe
  (Stephan Kinsella, stephankinsella.com, April 2021)
• On Property Rights in Superabundant Bananas and Property Rights as Normative Support for Possession
  (Stephan Kinsella, stephankinsella.com, 2025)
• Intellectual Property Rights as Negative Servitudes
  (Stephan Kinsella)
• Mises, Rothbard, Hoppe: An Indispensable Framework
  (Stephan Kinsella, in Rothbard at 100, 2026)
• Law and Intellectual Property in a Stateless Society
  (Stephan Kinsella; see Part III.C)
• The Problem with Intellectual Property
  (Stephan Kinsella; see Part III.C.2 and n. 73)
• On the Danger of Metaphors in Scientific Discourse
  (Stephan Kinsella, stephankinsella.com)

Note: Some references (e.g., book chapters or exact post URLs) are based on standard locations on stephankinsella.com. Links point to primary sources where available.

Grok summary

Summary of the blog post “Property: What Is It?” (by Max C. Sterling, Exit Now, June 28, 2026)

The post argues that property is fundamentally a conflict-avoiding norm arising from the reality of scarcity (rivalrous goods where use by one person precludes use by another). Without scarcity, there is no need for property rules. Its purpose is to resolve disputes over scarce resources in a just, objective way, enabling peaceful social cooperation (quoting Hoppe on this). [continue reading…]

The Supreme Court just told the copyright cartels that your ISP isn’t liable when you pirate something, because the ISP didn’t tell you to do it.

So what’s Hollywood’s response? They’re openly demanding an “alternative enforcement tool,” which is the polite way of saying they’ll… pic.twitter.com/VfrlmHOAtE

— Free Talk Live (@FreeTalkLive) July 14, 2026

• Justices reject billion-dollar judgment for copyright infringement by internet service provider
• Cox Communications v. Sony Entertainment
• RIAA Statement on Supreme Court Decision in Cox Case: “We are disappointed in the Court’s decision vacating a jury’s determination that Cox Communications contributed to mass scale copyright infringement, based on overwhelming evidence that the company knowingly facilitated theft. To be effective, copyright law must protect creators and markets from harmful infringement and policymakers should look closely at the impact of this ruling. The Court’s decision is narrow, applying only to ‘contributory infringement’ cases involving defendants like Cox that do not themselves copy, host, distribute, or publish infringing material or control or induce such activity.”
• MPA Statement on Supreme Court Ruling in Cox Communications vs. Sony Music Entertainment (March 25, 2026):WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court today issued a ruling in the case of Cox Communications vs. Sony Music Entertainment. The following is a statement from Karyn Temple, Senior Executive Vice President and Global General Counsel for the Motion Picture Association.

  “We are disappointed in today’s Supreme Court decision, which upends the critical legal doctrine of contributory infringement for copyright that has served as a key factor fostering cooperation between rightsholders, internet service providers, and other online intermediaries. As the Supreme Court had previously observed, secondary liability, including contributory infringement, is ‘the only practical alternative’ for addressing widespread online theft. Unfortunately, the Court’s opinion today ignores this well-established rule and congressional intent, which is particularly disappointing amidst a growing consensus about the need for more accountability for facilitating harmful online conduct, not less. Despite today’s ruling, the MPA will continue to use all available legal tools to protect our members’ valuable intellectual property and the over 2 million American jobs our industry supports.”

None of this is a surprise. The Copyright fascists will never stop.

• “Death by Copyright-IP Fascist Police State Acronym” (Jan. 30, 2012)
• “SOPA is the Symptom, Copyright is the Disease: The SOPA Wakeup Call to Abolish Copyright,” The Libertarian Standard (Jan. 24, 2012)
• “Masnick on the Horrible PROTECT IP Act: The Coming IPolice State” (June 2, 2011)
• Son of COICA: New Copyright Bill Introduced
• Pirate-slaying censorship bill, COICA, gets unanimous support
• The Mountain of IP Legislation

Per Bylund, “Intellectual Property versus the Unrealized,” Mises Wire (06/25/2026) (below).

Related

• Per Bylund: Intellectual Property: Innovation Should Serve Consumers, Not Producers
• Bylund: The Minarchist Statist Hangups: Anarchist Statelessness and Abolution of Intellectual Property
• Austrian Economics Center and Hayek Institute Support IP Socialism and 2026 World IP Day Coalition
• Milton Friedman (and Rothbard) on the Distorting and Skewing Effect of Patents
• Intellectual Property Advocates Hate Competition
• IP Law and “Market Failure”
• David Friedman on Intellectual Property (and Market Failure)
• Tucker: IP: It’s a market failure argument
• Tabarrok and Murphy: Why Are US Drug Prices So High?
• Related C4SIF posts
• The Problem with Intellectual Property, Part III

Per links in this article to his article “Ozempic Sat Unused for Decades Because Invention Is Not Enough,” The Daily Economy (June 25, 2026) (“Pfizer knew GLP-1s worked in 1990, but didn’t see their potential. The 30-year detour shows entrepreneurship matters as much as raw invention.”). This is also good, but a couple quibbles. In a few places he refers to ideas being “stolen”:

Business history is filled with cases in which inventors appear to have been deprived of the rewards of their discoveries. Many great inventions were, in some sense, stolen ideas commercialized by someone other than their inventors. … Some unethical behavior, fraud, exploitation, and outright stealing certainly does exist in these stories.

He links to 10 famous inventions that come from stolen ideas and The epic, decades-long battle between Ford and a small-time inventor. The latter gives the example of Robert Kearns, who invented the intermittent windshield wiper and showed it to Ford, who then allegedly “stole” it from Kearns. But as I have pointed out, it is impossible to “steal” ideas; ideas cannot be owned. Loaded terms like theft, stealing, ripping off, pirating, even “taking” are all inaccurate and imprecise. In a free market and a free society, peaceful activities like learning, copying, emulating, and competing are of course permissible as of right. It is true that in our quasi-statist world, the statist positive law corrupts natural, organic, evolved private law, which involves only offenses that are malum in se, with artificial fiat legislation, which creates offenses which are merely malum prohibitum. So copying someone’s idea is not “stealing” at all, even if the corrupt, legislated fiat law makes it an offense. But this is still not theft; it is a made up offense called infringement. Even the courts recognize this: as the US Supreme Court wrote in Dowling vs United States,

interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud. The Copyright Act even employs a separate term of art to define one who misappropriates a copyright: “[…] an infringer of the copyright.”

It is understandable that dishonest advocates of IP socialism want to muddy the waters and use loaded terms with negative connotations to describe what is simply peaceful behavior—learning, copying, emulating, competing—as stealing, but when even the courts concede that these offense are not actually theft or stealing but only a made-up tort of “infringement,” we free-market opponents of IP socialism should not use the socialists’ dishonest and inaccurate terminology.

Related

• It is impossible to own ideas
• 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
• Lacalle on China and IP “Theft”
•  More of the “China is Stealing Our IP” nonsense
• All-In Podcast Concern over China and IP “Theft”
• A Libertarian Theory of Contract: Title Transfer, Binding Promises, and Inalienability, at n.31
• The Problem with Intellectual Property, Part III.A.3
• IP is Not “Not Property”
• Owning Ideas, Owning Bitcoin, Owning Fiat Dollars
• Another way to explain the problem with IP: Resources v. Knowledge; Ownership v. Possession
• Munger on Property Rights in Words and Information
• other posts and articles on the impossibility of “owning ideas“

Intellectual Property versus the Unrealized

Per Bylund • Mises Wire • 06/25/2026

Why would anyone invest large sums of capital into creating something new of uncertain income? This question captures the core of the argument for intellectual property, or the legal protection of inventors’ ideas from being copied and put to broader use. The simple logic appears intuitive and therefore persuasive, but does not stand up to scrutiny. Why? Because it applies to all entrepreneurship, which is always an investment in something of uncertain value. Yet this does not seem to stop entrepreneurs. Or, rather, it moderates which entrepreneurial projects are undertaken so that the craziest ideas are not pursued unless they are potentially very profitable. [continue reading…]

Related

• KOL234 | Vin Armani Show: Live from London: Kinsella vs. Craig Wright Debate on Intellectual Property
• KOL267 | Sal the Agorist Interview: Bitcoin, Copyright, Craig Wright
• Tufty the Cat: Faketoshi Patent Oppositions – The Story So Far
• Craig Wright: You Don’t Own Your Digital Stuff. NFTs Could Actually Fix That — Without Intellectual Property
• Optimal Patent and Copyright Term Length
• Tabarrok and Murphy: Why Are US Drug Prices So High?
• Tabarrok: Patent Policy on the Back of a Napkin
• The Overwhelming Empirical Case Against Patent and Copyright
• “The Problem with Intellectual Property”
•  Against Intellectual Property
• “Law and Intellectual Property in a Stateless Society,” in Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023) (LFFS)
• Against Intellectual Property After Twenty Years: Looking Back and Looking Forward, in LFFS
• Reason’s Tim Lee on Two Decades of Attempts to Enforce Copyright

I’ve been squabbling in last few days with Craig Wright on Twitter. I append some below. Now he has some out with some babbling faux-econometric “proof” of optimal patent terms or something: Craig Wright, “The Price of Ideas,” Craig’s Substack (June 20, 2026). It’s just a big pretentious word salad. He doesn’t not seem to realize some of us are Austrians and reject this entire approach—the same way Rothbard and Hoppe reject the standard utilitarian model attempting to justify antitrust law.¹ I specifically address, among many problems with standard defenses of IP, the utilitarian defense; this is just one of many problems with the case for IP. See, e.g., Kinsella, “The Problem with Intellectual Property,” Part III.B; Against Intellectual Property, “Utilitarian Defenses of IP”; Kinsella, “Law and Intellectual Property in a Stateless Society,” Part III.A, in LFFS. Wright does not deal with this at all. He just marches on as if there is nothing wrong methodologically or ethically with utilitarian arguments for law and rights. [continue reading…]

1. Murray N. Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State, with Power and Market, Scholar’s ed., 2nd ed. (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 2009), ch. 10: “Monopoly and Competition”; Hans-Hermann Hoppe, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism (Laissez Faire Books, 2013), ch. 10, “Capitalist Production and the Problem of Monopoly.” [↩]

From Duke University Libraries blog.

Related

• Utah legislative summary materials
• 17 U.S.C. § 105, “Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government.”
• Grok on the public edicts doctrine
• EFF: Supreme Court Affirms That No One Owns the Law
• Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org Inc.: “Georgia tried to claim copyright in the annotations (explanatory summaries, case notes, etc.) in its official annotated code. The Court ruled 5-4 that these annotations—created under legislative authority and published as the official code—were not copyrightable. Chief Justice Roberts wrote that the doctrine applies to works legislators and judges create in their official capacities, including explanatory materials.”
• Justia: Banks v. Manchester (1888): Judges cannot copyright their opinions or related judicial work. Wheaton v. Peters (1834): No copyright in Supreme Court opinions.
• The state copyright conundrum What’s your state government’s rule on copyright?

Who owns the law?

Just came across this old post from bionic mosquito (whose name is apparently Jonathan Goodwin, according to Danny Ajamian;¹ I am not really sure) about IP and my then-upcoming debate with Werewolf Wenzel. Bionic is somewhat confused about all this, but at least doens’t seem to favor IP or pretend he is an expert on it. But for example, he writes:

I have never found the debate significantly important to me: can one own an idea (in its various manifestations)?  While it is to me personally a rather peripheral issue given the other, more clear-cut, governmentally-enabled property rights violations we face daily, it is an important consideration for some in the libertarian community.

It may not be important “to him” but it is far from a marginal or trivial issue. It’s up there with war, taxation, the fed, and so on. It’s very damaging and insidious.²

He also wonders if IP could be enforced privately, by contract, in a stateless society. It cannot as I have explained because IP is not a contractual, in personam, right; it is an in rem property right. It has nothing to do with contract (see IP as Contract), as Mosquito suggests in the comments, e.g. with this statement: [continue reading…]

1. Daniel Ajamian, “The Cost of Enlightenment,” Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 22, no. 2 (Summer 2019). [↩]
2. “Patent vs. Copyright: Which is Worse?”; “Where does IP Rank Among the Worst State Laws?” [↩]

Wojciech Gamrot, “Labor as the Basis for Intellectual Property Rights: Against Cwik,” Philosophy of Management (2026; pdf).

Abstract:

While the dominant justification for intellectual property rights seems to remain consequentialist, various deontological theories are also proposed. They often appeal, directly or indirectly, to intellectual labor as a source of rights or as a circumstance that is relevant to justifying intellectual property on moral grounds. Recently, another such theory has been proposed by Bryan Cwik, gaining substantial recognition. It holds that, in the absence of intellectual property regulation, innovators and artists are at a disadvantage as compared to manual laborers. This is because they cannot control how the fruits of their intellectual labor are used. Patents, copyrights and other similar regimes are portrayed as necessary to secure their control over the exercise of their productive capacities. In the present paper Cwik’s theory is evaluated and exposed as indeterminate. Its metaphysical presuppositions are also criticized. When they are replaced by a more coherent ontology, a reinterpretation of control relations follows. Cwik’s objective of maximizing individuals’ control over their own productive capacities is achieved by intellectual property abolition, rather than enforcement. His theory fails to support intellectual monopoly.

To be updated later: for now see:

Bryan Cwik, “Property Rights in Non‐rival Goods” (2, 3, 4). It’s another flawed argument, but at least he recognizes that ideas are not scarce (in the sense of rivalrous) and thus, to justify IP, one must come up with some way to justify property rights in non-rival goods. No surprise, he elsewhere makes other bad arguments for IP, e.g. “Labor as the Basis for Intellectual Property Rights” (2; 3).

(See also: “Good Ideas is Pretty Scarce”; KOL491 | Trying to Persuade Paul Cwik of the Case Against IP )

***

other IP theories

“The Problem with Intellectual Property,”

Paul Cwik: bad/evolving: See “Is There Room for Intellectual Property Rights in Austrian Economics?“, Mises.org (3/04/2008); also our recent discussion, KOL491, [tbd]

As I note in “Good Ideas is Pretty Scarce”,  Yet others are a mite more honest. Case in point: “Property Rights in Non‐rival Goods,” by Bryan Cwik. It’s another flawed argument, but at least he recognizes that ideas are not scarce (in the sense of rivalrous) and thus, to justify IP, one must come up with some way to justify property rights in non-rival goods. No surprise, he elsewhere makes other bad arguments for IP, e.g. “Labor as the Basis for Intellectual Property Rights“; Gamrot, Labor as the Basis for Intellectual Property Rights: Against Cwik. (Interestingly, another Cwik, Paul Cwik, also makes bad arguments in favor of IP. Unlike the other Cwik, Paul should know better, as he is an Austrian and libertarian. See Classical Liberals, Libertarians, Anarchists and Others on Intellectual Property.)

[Cross-posted at PFS Blog]

Congrats, pro-IP libertarians. This is the kind of fascist bullshit you support. https://t.co/Om2WrqIbRI

— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) June 11, 2026

[continue reading…]

Related

• (All by Kinsella), “Patents, Pharma, Government: The Unholy Alliance,” Brownstone Institute (April 1, 2024)
• The Overwhelming Empirical Case Against Patent and Copyright
• Tabarrok and Murphy: Why Are US Drug Prices So High?
• Intellectual Property Rights as Negative Servitudes
• “Intellectual Property Advocates Hate Competition”
• Are Patents and Copyrights “Monopolies”?
• IP Rights as Monopolistic Grants to Overcome the Public Goods Problem
• “Decouple Trade and IP Protection,” Brownstone Institute (Dec. 4, 2024)
• The China Stealing IP Myth
• “Free-trade” pacts export U.S. copyright controls
• Patents and Pharmaceuticals
• “FDA and Patent Reform: A Modest Proposal” (May 5, 2023)
  • “Are Patents Needed to Make Up for FDA Kneecapping?” (July 2, 2011)
• KOL469 | Haman Nature Hn 149: Tabarrok on Patents, Price Controls, and Drug Reimportation
• Optimal Patent and Copyright Term Length
• Tabarrok: Patent Policy on the Back of a Napkin
• Classical Liberals, Libertarians, Anarchists and Others on Intellectual Property
• Pharmaceutical Shills and Think Tank Corruption: Sally Pipes’s The World’s Medicine Chest: How America Achieved Pharmaceutical Supremacy―and How to Keep It
• Hello! You’ve Been Referred Here Because You’re Wrong About Intellectual Property: “IP can’t be socialistic, since the Soviet Union didn’t recognize IP law.”

See Lawrence Wilson and Sylvia Xu, “The Loophole Drug Makers Use to Keep Prices High: How pharmaceutical companies use the patent system to delay generic drugs from coming to market,” Epoch Times – In Depth – Premium Reports (May 24, 2026). Decent article. Of course, it hypocritically whines about patent law “abuse” while using the equally evil¹ copyright law and paywalls to block people from reading this information, so I post only a snippet and a Grok summary below.²

The article is wrong to refer to this as a “loophole.” This is just sleazy clickbait since the word does not even appear in the article. Using patent law as it is written is not a loophole nor is it “abuse.” The thing, the thing, the thing itself is the abuse! (h/t Burke) No; this is just the normal response of market actors to a patent system. If you give free food to people (“you on da the welfare,” as Eddie Murphy would say), they will take it, like hogs to a trough. If you give market actors the ability to use state force to hobble competitors by acquiring patents, they’ll do it. Welfare recipient are not the problem; patent applicants are not the the problem. The problem is the state stealing from taxpayers and granting patents! —and the confused citizens and intellectuals who support this robbery (Yes, Dorothy, patents are theft;³ I would say, “h/t Proudhon” but but while he said property is theft⁴ it is not clear that he opposed IP, any more than other stupid socialists oppose IP.)⁵ So the subtitle is correct: “How pharmaceutical companies use the patent system to delay generic drugs from coming to market.” Why wouldn’t they? What do you expect? It’s not a loophole. SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE! [continue reading…]

1. “Patent vs. Copyright: Which is Worse?” [↩]
2. We are all copyright criminals: John Tehranian’s “Infringement Nation”  [↩]
3. Intellectual Property Rights as Negative Servitudes. [↩]
4. Classical Liberals, Libertarians, Anarchists and Others on Intellectual Property. [↩]
5. Hello! You’ve Been Referred Here Because You’re Wrong About Intellectual Property: “IP can’t be socialistic, since the Soviet Union didn’t recognize IP law.” [↩]

[From my Webnote series]

Related

• The Overwhelming Empirical Case Against Patent and Copyright
• “Legal Scholars: Thumbs Down on Patent and Copyright”
• Intellectual Property’s Great Fallacy;
• Mark Lemley: The Very Basis Of Our Patent System… Is A Myth
• IP Law and “Market Failure”
• Richard Epstein’s Takings Political Theory versus Epstein’s Intellectual Property Views
• Richard Epstein’s Takings Theory of the State
• Email to Richard Epstein: Tension Between Takings Framework and IP Views
• “Intellectual Property Advocates Hate Competition”
• The Universal Principles of Liberty; The Fundamental Principles of Justice
• On Property Rights in Superabundant Bananas and Property Rights as Normative Support for Possession
• Libertarian and Lockean Creationism: Creation As a Source of Wealth, not Property Rights; Hayek’s “Fund of Experience”; the Distinction Between Scarce Means and Knowledge as Guides to Action
• The Problem with Intellectual Property

From various posts at C4SIF.org and StephanKinsella.com:

The Problem with Intellectual Property:****

I tire of people repeating over and over again that we need IP because without it there would be no innovation, etc. I have pointed out to them over and over that not only is this false,¹ but that it misconceives the purpose of law itself. It imagines that there are market failures and imperfections,² such as “holdout problems” and “free riders,”³ and “too much competition,⁴ and that the state is therefore justified in intervening–in engaging in what are in effect takings—in attempt to grow the size of the pie. Of course this never works because (a) there are no market failures, (b) even if there are, they are dwarfed by political failure, i.e. the solution is worse than the problem. But it also assumes that if the state could intervene and make things “better” in some vague sense, that this is justified. But this misconceives the purpose of law: it is is to do justice—by recognizing, identifying, defining, respecting, and protecting property rights.⁵ IP law violates property rights;⁶ it is the opposite of justice. It is a perversion of law and justice. [continue reading…]

1. The Overwhelming Empirical Case Against Patent and Copyright; “Legal Scholars: Thumbs Down on Patent and Copyright”;  Intellectual Property’s Great Fallacy; Mark Lemley: The Very Basis Of Our Patent System… Is A Myth. [↩]
2. IP Law and “Market Failure”. [↩]
3. Richard Epstein’s Takings Political Theory versus Epstein’s Intellectual Property Views; Richard Epstein’s Takings Theory of the State; Email to Richard Epstein: Tension Between Takings Framework and IP Views.  [↩]
4. “Intellectual Property Advocates Hate Competition”. [↩]
5. As Justinian himself said, “Justice is the constant and perpetual wish to render every one his due.… The maxims of law are these: to live honestly, to hurt no one, to give every one his due.” Thomas, ed. (1975, Book 1, Title 1). See also The Universal Principles of Liberty; The Fundamental Principles of Justice; The Fundamental Principles of Justice. [↩]
6.  Intellectual Property Rights as Negative Servitudes. [↩]

Related

Kinsella, “Defamation as a Type of Intellectual Property,” in A Life in Liberty: Liber Amicorum in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, edited by Jörg Guido Hülsmann & Stephan Kinsella (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2024)

• • The Patent, Copyright, Trademark, and Trade Secret Horror Files
  • “Defamation as a Type of Intellectual Property,” in A Life in Liberty: Liber Amicorum in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, edited by Jörg Guido Hülsmann & Stephan Kinsella (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2024)
  • KOL485 | The Brownstone Show, with Jeffrey Tucker: Defamation and Intellectual Property
  • The Velvet Elvis and Other Trademark Absurdities
  • Taylor Swift Files Trademark to Protect Her Voice and Likeness Against AI Misuse
  • Trademark Ain’t So Hot Either…
  • Trademark and Fraud; Discussion with George Reisman
  • Copyright is Unconstitutional (trademark too)
    • The Velvet Elvis and Other Trademark Absurdities
    • KOL483 | The Economics and Ethics of Intellectual Property, Loyola University—New Orleans
  • Classificationism, Legislation, Copyright
  • Federal Judges Aren’t Real Judges
  • Another Problem with Legislation: James Carter v. the Field Codes
  • Re the “tension” between free speech and trademark, like other tensions such as the tension between patent and competition, between patent and copyright law and monopolies and antitrust law:
    • Antitrust vs. Trademark Law
    • Price Controls, Antitrust, and Patents (July 2011)
    • Antitrust vs. Trademark Law (June 2011)
    • The Schizo Feds: Patent Monopolies and the FTC (Aug. 2006)
    • The Schizophrenic State (Jan. 2006)
    • IP vs. Antitrust (Sept. 2005)
    • The Microsoft-Apple Gesture Oligopoly
    • Controls breed controls, Monopolies breed monopolies
    • When Antitrust and Patents Collide (Rambus v. FTC)

Trademarks and Free Speech: Conflicts and Resolutions: CIPIL Evening Seminar, Cambridge lecture by Lisa P. Ramsey, author of Trademarks and Free Speech: Conflicts and Resolutions (Cambridge, 2026). [continue reading…]

[From my Webnote series]

Related

• Classificationism, Legislation, Copyright
• Federal Judges Aren’t Real Judges
• Another Problem with Legislation: James Carter v. the Field Codes
• The Non-Aggression Principle as a Limit on Action, Not on Property Rights; Individuals are Responsible for Actions, not “for Their Property”; Property rights are not obligations or responsibilities
• On Conflictability and Conflictable Resources
• The “Ontology” Mistake of Libertarian Creationists
• Hardy Bouillon, A Note on Intellectual Property and Externalities
• Stephan Kinsella, Against Intellectual Property After Twenty Years: Looking Back and Looking Forward, in Legal Foundations of a Free Society [LFFS] (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023), n30.
• Reply to Van Dun: Non-Aggression and Title Transfer, in LFFS
• Sarah Isgur and David French, “SCOTUS Clears Way for Alabama to Use Congressional Map,” Advisory Opinions (May 14, 2026), at 38:21
• Vericool World LLC v. Igloo Products Corp., No. 24-192 (9th Cir. May 6, 2026) (GovInfo; pdf)
• John Rearick, “Other Barks & Bites for Friday, May 8: … Split Ninth Circuit Panel Nixes False Representation Claims,” IPWatchdog.com (May 8, 2026)
• Rebecca Tushnet, “Dastar bars false advertising claim against “first of its kind” ads,” Rebecca Tushnet’s Blog (Dec. 15, 2023)
• Jeff Greenbaum, “Who Made the “First” Biodegradable Cooler?,” Advertising Law Blog, Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz PC (May 11, 2026)

Interesting recent case discussed by Sarah Isgur and David French in Advisory Opinions:¹ Vericool World LLC v. Igloo Products Corp. (9th Cir. May 6, 2026).² [continue reading…]

1. David French, “SCOTUS Clears Way for Alabama to Use Congressional Map,” Advisory Opinions (May 14, 2026), at 38:21. [↩]
2. Vericool World LLC v. Igloo Products Corp., No. 24-192 (9th Cir. May 6, 2026) (GovInfo; pdf), a Ninth Circuit opinion affirming summary judgment and holding that “first to market” claims are not actionable under the Lanham Act [trademark law] as they concern the origin of an idea rather than observable product characteristics. For commentary, see John Rearick, “Other Barks & Bites for Friday, May 8: … Split Ninth Circuit Panel Nixes False Representation Claims,” IPWatchdog.com (May 8, 2026) (solid summary of the split decision, majority’s tangible-vs.-intangible line, Bumatay dissent on plain meaning, and patent-law overlap concerns); Rebecca Tushnet, “Dastar bars false advertising claim against “first of its kind” ads,” Rebecca Tushnet’s Blog (Dec. 15, 2023) (analysis of the district court ruling framing it as a Dastar-based bar on false-advertising claims for “first of its kind” ads); Jeff Greenbaum, “Who Made the “First” Biodegradable Cooler?,” Advertising Law Blog, Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz PC (May 11, 2026) (practical analysis of the Ninth Circuit holding, Lanham Act limits, and implications for advertisers making priority/originality claims). [↩]