Speaking at APEE IP Panel in Guatemala

by Stephan Kinsella on April 3, 2025

As I relate here, My Failed Libertarian Speaking Hiat us; Memories of Mises Institute and Other Events, 1988–~~2019~~2025, I’m trying this year to slow down, or at least change, the number of libertarian and related events I attend this year. For example I recently attended a completely non-normative (well mostly) and non-libertarian scholarly legal conference which I thoroughly enjoyed.¹

I had initially planned to speak at the APEE 49th Meeting in Guatemala City, making it into a 5-day guy trip vacation with my buddy Greg Morin. In January I bowed out because I was juggling too much. But recently I changed my mind and decided to attend and speak after all, but only attending for one full day. So this year I am presenting on “Patent and Copyright versus Innovation, Competition, and Property Rights,” APEE 49th Meeting, “The Economic History of State and Market Institutions,” April 6-8, 2025, Guatemala City, Guatemala (program).

My panel is Panel 50. [1.E.06] “Intellectual Property: Old Problems and New Developments,” which features my anti-IP talk; what is sure to an interesting paper, “Copyright versus Innovation in the Market for Recorded Music,” by Julio Cole, who is also anti-IP,² and what appears to be pro-IP paper, “Intellectual Property: A Randian Approach Warren Orbaugh, Universidad Francisco Marroquín. As I tweeted, Orbaugh gives an interesting talk here, so he does not seem to be a typical Randian (e.g. the type who demonizes Mises for his use of Kantian terms and concepts).³

And while at APEE, home of the heroic free-market Universidad Francisco Marroquín (where my old friend Bill Marina⁴ used to teach), I was invited to speak and lead a discussion at a special session of the colloquium of the CEES (Centro de Estudios Económico-Sociales, affiliated with Universidad Francisco Marroquín) on the topic of self-ownership and natural rights, on Monday, April 7, 2025 (some of them seem to be looking forward to it). So I am looking forward to my trip.

There is also a second IP panel at the APEE meeting I’m interested in attending, “Intellectual Property and Information Technology,” which has a paper by the anti-IP Lucca Tanzillo Dos Santos, “Ideas Are Not Property: A Cross-Country Analysis of Institutions and Innovation,”⁵ as well as a pro-IP paper by Adam Moore, “Five Arguments for Intellectual Property,” who has written fairly in assessing both anti- and pro-IP arguments in the past.⁶

As I noted in the tweet, though I would prefer all libertarian groups to be 100% IP, at least this group’s panels are somewhat balanced: at least three anti-IP speakers (me, Cole, Dos Santos) and only two obviously pro-IP speakers (Moore and Orbaugh). That’s progress! As I’ve noted before, far too many so-called free-market or libertarian institutions or groups are bad or pro-IP, and I’ve called many of them out:

Speaking of APEE, I am reminded of an old post where I mentioned Sheldon Richman’s comments about participating in an IP panel at the 2011 APEE meeting:⁷

IP libertarians rarely seem to understand the horrible, unlibertarian implications of their views. Case in point, Mossoff recently appeared on an IP panel at the recent APEE annual meeting, along with several anti-IP libertarians, including Sheldon Richman (I believe Roderick Long was present too but I am not sure if he was on that panel).¹³ The panel also had Ed Lopez who offered efficiency arguments against IP but was not much part of the debate. Richman related to me that at one point, Roy Cordato asked Mossoff if IP would protect a Kirznerian entrepreneur who has a novel insight about the gap between the cost of inputs and the price of an output. At first Mossoff said he didn’t know what a Kirznerian entrepreneur was (Cordato explained), then he didn’t get the point (thinking Cordato meant the actual product rather than the idea about the gap between costs and price), then ended up saying that the idea would be patentable–which means the law would stop market equilibration, since others could not jump in and imitate the entrepreneur.

And as I noted in KOL235 | Intellectual Property: A First Principles Debate (Federalist Society POLICYbrief):

many libertarian groups are now explicitly anti-IP or at least are willing to host speakers and writers with this view, such as: the Mises Institute, and various Mises Institutes around the world (Sweden, Brasil, UK, etc.); the Property and Freedom Society; and others, like the IEA (see Stephen Davies’ Intellectual Property Rights: Yay or Nay); the Adam Smith Forum-Russia, which had me present a sweeping case for IP abolition; and the Adam Smith Institute in London, which also has featured strong voices in opposition to IP (Adam Smith Institute: Do not feed the patent troll; Intellectual property: an unnecessary evil). FEE has featured my work and that of other IP abolitionists, like Sheldon Richman. Even the Mercatus Center has promoted strong IP reform, although not outright abolition (see, e.g., Tom Bell, What is Intellectual Privilege?).

And, I’ve been invited to speak against IP in a number of fora, podcasts, and radio shows—PorcFest, Libertopia, Students for Liberty, FreeTalkLive, and so on. Even John Stossel’s Fox show featured me and David Koepsell arguing the abolitionist side. So. This is good progress, and parallels the increasing interest in IP by libertarians and their increasing opposition to this type of law.

But not all libertarian groups, sadly, recognize IP for the unjust state institution that it is. The Libertarian Party, for example, shamefully takes no stance on IP in its platform. This would be like failing to oppose chattel slavery, conscription, or the drug war in a society where these things were going on. The Cato Institute usually presents pro-IP speakers or those who talk about “reform” (see my post Disinvited From Cato). The Independent Institute has featured the pro-IP work of William Shughart (see Independent Institute on The “Benefits” of Intellectual Property Protection). Other so-called free market groups have also been bad on IP: Austrian Economics Center, Hayek Institute, Other Liberal Groups Come Out for Stronger Intellectual Property Protection. The tech-libertarian groups, like EFF, fulminate against “junk” patents and patent trolls but do not oppose IP itself. Even the tech-libertarian defenders of poor Aaron Swartz, driven to suicide by the threat of draconian copyright criminal penalties, shamefully, disgustingly admitted that he of course needed “some punishment.” And of course all the Objectivist groups are rabidly for IP (see e.g. work by Adam Mossoff).

As for the Federalist Society—I did participate in an IP debate at a local chapter (Federalist Society IP Debate (Ohio State)), and their Intellectual Property Practice Group Newsletter did reprint one of my early short articles against IP (Is Intellectual Property Legitimate? , vol. 3, Issue 3 (Winter 2000)). But overall the Federalist Society has presented basically the pro-IP side (More defenses of IP by the Federalist Society; Federalist Society Panel: Undermining or Preserving Property Rights? The New Administrative Patents). I pestered them over years to include more balanced treatment in their bibliography, to no avail (Anti-IP Material Needed in the IP Section of the Federalist Society’s “Conservative & Libertarian Legal Scholarship: Annotated Bibliography”).

So I’m very pleased they finally chose to present the anti-IP side alongside the conventional arguments.