Hoppe on Reisman and Rothbard on Intellectual Property

by Stephan Kinsella on October 16, 2025

As I’ve noted previously,¹ Hans-Hermann Hoppe fully agrees with me that intellectual property law is completely unjust. In fact he was already solid on this as early as 1988, well before I was—I didn’t adopt my current views until I started looking into the issue around 1993 when I decided to become a patent attorney—(( My first publications on IP include Letter on Intellectual Property Rights, IOS Journal 5, no. 2 (June 1995), pp. 12-13; “Is Intellectual Property Legitimate?“, Pennsylvania Bar Association Intellectual Property Newsletter 1 (Winter 1998): 3; republished in the Federalist Society’s Intellectual Property Practice Group Newsletter, vol. 3, Issue 3 (Winter 2000); and In Defense of Napster and Against the Second Homesteading Rule, September 4, 2000, LewRockwell.com. )) when he appeared on a panel discussion with Hoppe, Rothbard, David Gordon, and Leland Yeager. In that discussion, there was the following exchange:

AUDIENCE QUESTION: I have a question for Professor Hoppe. Does the idea of personal sovereignty extend to knowledge? Am I sovereign over my thoughts, ideas, and theories? …

HOPPE: … in order to have a thought you must have property rights over your body. That doesn’t imply that you own your thoughts. The thoughts can be used by anybody who is capable of understanding them.

I’ve criticized Rothbard for his IP views, particularly his argument for some form of “contractual” patent/copyright,² but have mused that had he lived longer he probably would have come to agree with us IP abolitionists. After all, he said nothing when Hoppe expressed anti-IP views in the 1988 panel mentioned above. But unfortunately he died in 1995, just as the Internet was starting and renewed debates about IP were about to start happening, so we will never know for sure.³

I asked Hans whether he had ever discussed IP with Rothbard in his 10 years with him. Our interchange (edited):

Kinsella: “Hans other than that time you mentioned IP on a panel in 1988 with Rothbard do you call ever discussing the topic with him?”

Hoppe: “Topic came never up. Next time I talked about it was in a debate with Reisman at some Mises event.”

Kinsella: “You debated Reisman on IP? I would love to find video of that.”

Hans: “I am not sure it was taped. It was in one of the smaller rooms. [Jeff] Tucker was still at the Institute then, and he briefly mentioned the debate at the time in one of their publications. It was at an Austrian Scholars Conference.”

Kinsella: Do you agree Murray would have agreed with us on IP if he had had time to re-think it and think it through? After all in 1988 on the panel where you expressed anti-IP views he didn’t object.

Hans: I agree. No question. He was to close to the solution anyhow.

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As I told Hans, I think his mistake was that he didn’t apply his own title-transfer contract theory consistently enough, which is understandable since he was pioneering it. Also, my impression is that while Mises focused on scarcity, Rothbard did not focus on it as much, but you doubled-down on Mises’s focus on scarcity and its relation to property. Therefore when you combined Mises and Rothbard, it was obvious to you. If we draw his attention to the separate and distinct roles of scarce means, and knowledge, in action, he would have certainty grasped it and abandoned his “contractual” argument for IP.

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In any case, I was intrigued about this debate on IP between Hoppe and Reisman at an ASC. Maybe I was there, if so I do not remember this. Reisman, as an Objectivist, is clearly in favor of IP.⁴ In fact I distinctly recall Reisman being surprised at my anti-IP views when I presented my against IP paper at the ASC in March 2000.⁵ And yet, perhaps ironically, with my help, he has released his work from copyright by means of a CC-BY license.⁶

I asked Jeffrey Tucker about this. He said he remembers arranging the debate at Reisman’s request, but it was not recorded. In fact Jeff was reluctant to set it up because at the time he was not yet anti-IP and thought the issue was odd and academic. He was a bit mortified to give the issue attention but did so at Reisman’s request. It was not until Tucker read Boldrin and Levine’s Against Intellectual Monopoly that he saw how horrible IP is and how important the issue is.⁷

I called Reisman just now (Oct. 16, 2025) and chatted with him about this to see if he had any more information. He did not remember this at all. But he did confirm he is still in favor of IP, though he thinks the current copyright term is insanely long.

Good times.