Attempts to Get on Mainstream IP Podcast and <em>AIPLA Quarterly Journal</em> Predictably Fail

I have done what I can to present my case against IP not only to Austrians and libertarians but to other lawyers. Anything to get the word out and to defeat or put a dent in the support for evil IP. I asked Walter Block one time why he published so many articles on blackmail theory, many redundant or duplicative. He just said something like, “As Murray Rothbard would say … SMASH ‘EM!”¹ I guess I feel the same about IP. So I’ve accepted debates and spoken before non-libertarian audiences and published in various related fora such as IP group newsletters, universities, or Federalist society or other fora, e.g.:

• “Is Intellectual Property Legitimate?“y, Pennsylvania Bar Association IP Law Newsletter (1998), later published in the Federalist Society’s Intellectual Property Practice Group Newsletter in 2000
• KOL308 | Stossel: It’s My Idea (2015)
• KOL235 | Intellectual Property: A First Principles Debate (Federalist Society POLICYbrief)
• KOL483 | The Economics and Ethics of Intellectual Property, Loyola University—New Orleans
• KOL079 | “Federalist Society IP Debate (Ohio State)” (2011)
• KOL427 | Lewis & Clark College Debate on Intellectual Property Imperialism
• KOL253 | Berkeley Law Federalist Society: A Libertarian’s Case Against Intellectual Property
• KOL151 | Yale Speech: Balancing Intellectual Property Rights and Civil Liberties: A Libertarian Perspective
• KOL230 | Yale Political Union Debate: Resolved: IP Should Be Abolished!
• KOL071 | “Intellectual Property Law and Policy” at NYU School of Law Symposium (2011)
• KOL101 | The Future (the End?) of Intellectual Property (Open Science Summit, 2011) (Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California)

I’ve tried to break into the IP lawyer crowd too. I tried a few times to get on the Editorial Board of the American Intellectual Property Law Association’s AIPLA Quarterly Journal, back in 1999 and 2000 (pdf) and again in 2022 (see questionnaire and text of my letter, below). I attached my cv etc. No dice. As expected. Even though I’m obviously far more qualified than average.

Below is my recent email to Eli Mazour, a patent attorney with Foley and Lardner and host of the IP podcast Clause 8 (Youtube), attempting to persuade him to have me on his podcast to talk about the case against IP. The podcast is named after Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the U.S. Constitution — the Intellectual Property Clause (also called the Patent and Copyright Clause or Progress Clause), which gives Congress the power: “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”

As noted in my email, I have never once asked to speak or appear on someone else’s podcast etc., but I never speak to mainstream audiences partly because the patent community shuns me. So I thought would give it a shot. I would like my fellow patent attorneys to hear a dissident view and have to defend their promotion of evil IP law. As expected, he has so far ignored me.

I did approach some local law schools recently about teaching as an adjunct. I had taught computer/IP law at South Texas College of Law Houston in 1999 and 2000 but for some reason they ignored me. University of Houston Law Center was interested in having me teach. They wanted me to teach international patent law, but I wanted to teach IP law and policy: pro and con. To my surprise they finally relented and agreed to let me try that course, but I ended up declining for various reasons (very bureaucratic, for one, and I concluded it would be difficult to get many good students really interested in such a course).

My next plan is to possibly submit some articles to some mainstream IP or other law reviews, e.g. Richmond Journal of Law and Technology or some other one, perhaps on (a) my argument that copyright is unconstitutional,² or (b) my legal argument (unique to me as far as I know) that the proper way to legally classify IP rights of patent and copyright is a nonconsensual negative servitude,³ or (c) a review of the empirical case for IP.⁴ Yeah, most of these will probably go over like a turd in a punch bowl, but the negative servitude one has some potential, perhaps; it is purely legal, but once you characterize patent and copyright as negative servitudes, then flaws in arguments for IP become easier to see. We shall see. I apparently enjoy tilting at windmills.

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Email, Kinsella to Mazour

April 16, 2026

Mr. Mazour,

I often listen to and enjoy your podcast–it is well done and you are good at it.

I’m a mostly retired patent attorney–partner, IP department, Duane Morris LLP in Philadelphia; general counsel and VP-IP for Applied Optoelectronics; and then a solo practice. Formerly adjunct professor at South Texas College of Law Houston, a well-known libertarian writer and speaker. Also widely published on legal topics on IP law, international law, Roman and civil law, and so on.

Since around the time I passed the patent bar (in 1994), I have been a strong and vocal critic of the patent system and IP in general. My view is that patents violate property rights and are contrary to capitalism, free markets, competition, and innovation, and also that the patent system does not provide the supposed empirical benefits its supporters claim. I am good at articulating this position.

I have published, debated, lectured, and spoken countless times over the last 30 years on this topic. I have persuaded a large number of libertarians and free market supporters of my case. Naturally, my anti-IP views are not shared by most mainstream patent practitioners. Because of this it is probably a position most of your listeners are mostly unaware of–an intelligent and principled criticism of the patent system. That said, there are in fact some patent attorneys who agree with me (Pro-IP “Anarchists” and anti-IP Patent Attorneys), but most of them are fairly quiet about this, for obvious reasons. Some even want to be anonymous (Miracle–An Honest Patent Attorney!). As Upton Sinclair quipped, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

I am probably one of the best-known opponents of IP in the world. I am invited frequently to speak and lecture and am interviewed on this topic, including speeches/debates at Yale, Berkeley, NYU, and others, an appearance on the John Stossel show on Fox, a debate against Richard Epstein in New York, and so on, and have never once in my career asked to be on a podcast. I don’t operate that way. I only respond to requests for interviews or to deliver lectures. In fact my own podcast (almost 500 episodes by now) mostly consists of copies of my appearances on others’ shows or recordings of my debates and lectures. (I was even set to debate Gene Quinn years ago, but instead he blocked me from commenting on his site and was then set to debate my colleague, the anti-IP philosopher and legal theorist David Koepsell, whom I also got invited onto the Stossel show, but Quinn found a way to back out of that too.)

Nonetheless, though I have never once requested an interview or speaking gig, I would in this case make an exception and suggest you consider having me on your show to provide a minority or dissident view on this topic, since your audience is a mainstream one and the type I would almost never reach and who would almost never hear a perspective like mine, and your podcast is the only one I have encountered with a host like yourself. I would be happy to field any questions, concisely explain my perspective, and address both empirical/utilitarian and natural rights/property rights aspects of the issue. I would bet your audience would find such a different perspective to be of interest, bracing even. My take might in fact upset a few of them, but it would doubtless be food for thought for most. As I wrote in the Pennsylvania Bar Association IP Law Newsletter back in 1998 (later published in the Federalist Society’s Intellectual Property Practice Group Newsletter in 2000 (see “Is Intellectual Property Legitimate?“)),

Paying the Bills versus Intellectual Integrity
It is not surprising that IP attorneys seem to take for granted the legitimacy of IP; after all, it pays the bills. This acknowledged self-interest does not necessarily mean that we are wrong to support IP; but it does give us cause to be skeptical of the seductive appeal of what may be makeweight rationalizations. As members of our community and as participants in the governmental and legal machinery, it behooves us to recognize our own built-in bias and, on occasion, to question and reflect on the widely-held justifications that we hear ourselves sometimes repeating by rote.

I list below just a few selected items showing some of my publications and experience in this matter. If you are interested, please let me know.

Best, Stephan

Kinsella selected writings, talks, and so on—

Resources

• Center for the Study of Innovative Freedom (my anti-IP center)
• StephanKinsella.com — libertarian publications
• KinsellaLaw.com — legal publications (including books by Oxford and so on)
• Bio (legal)
• A Selection of my Best Articles and Speeches on IP

Publications

• “The Problem with Intellectual Property” (forthcoming, 2026)
• Against Intellectual Property (2001/2008)
• Stephan Kinsella, Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023), Part IV
• Stephan Kinsella, You Can’t Own Ideas: Essays on Intellectual Property (ebook; Papinian Press, 2023)
• Stephan Kinsella, ed., The Anti-IP Reader: Free Market Critiques of Intellectual Property (ebook; Papinian Press, 2023)
• Do Business Without Intellectual Property (Liberty.me, 2014)
• The Overwhelming Empirical Case Against Patent and Copyright
• Intellectual Property Rights as Negative Servitudes
• “Intellectual Property and Libertarianism,” Mises Daily (Nov. 17, 2009). Concise case against IP

Other/related

• “The Death Throes of Pro-IP Libertarianism”
• Pro-IP “Anarchists” and anti-IP Patent Attorneys
• Miracle–An Honest Patent Attorney!
• The Four Historical Phases of IP Abolitionism
• The Origins of Libertarian IP Abolitionism

Speaking/Lecturing/Debating

• KOL172 | “Rethinking Intellectual Property: History, Theory, and Economics: Lecture 1: History and Law” (Mises Academy, 2011) (six lecture course)
• KOL483 | The Economics and Ethics of Intellectual Property, Loyola University—New Orleans (a very good recent overview)
• KOL471 | “What Is Property? And What Is Not? — Part 1,” Capitalism & Morality (Vancouver)
• KOL472 | “What Is Property? And What Is Not? — Part 2 — Fireside Chat on Intellectual Property with Albert Lu,” Capitalism & Morality (Vancouver)
• KOL235 | Intellectual Property: A First Principles Debate (Federalist Society POLICYbrief)
• KOL364 | Soho Forum Debate vs. Richard Epstein: Patent and Copyright Law Should Be Abolished
• KOL308 | Stossel: It’s My Idea (2015)

Other

• KOL253 | Berkeley Law Federalist Society: A Libertarian’s Case Against Intellectual Property
• KOL 037 | Locke’s Big Mistake: How the Labor Theory of Property Ruined Political Theory
• KOL151 | Yale Speech: Balancing Intellectual Property Rights and Civil Liberties: A Libertarian Perspective
• KOL230 | Yale Political Union Debate: Resolved: IP Should Be Abolished!
• KOL071 | “Intellectual Property Law and Policy” at NYU School of Law Symposium (2011)

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Kinsella, Letter to AIPLA Quarterly Journal

August 23, 2022

AIPLA Quarterly Journal
Editorial Board Selection Committee
Via email to [email protected]

Re: AIPLA Quarterly Journal Editorial Board

Dear Sirs:

I am interested in serving on the Editorial Board of the AIPLA Quarterly Journal. I am a registered patent attorney with 29 years’ IP law experience. I was a partner in the IP department of Duane Morris (Philadelphia and Houston), General Counsel & VP-Intellectual Property, Applied Optoelectronics, Inc. (AAOI), and now a solo patent practitioner. I was previously adjunct Professor of computer law at South Texas College of Law and am author of numerous publications on IP and international law, as well as IP policy and legal theory from a libertarian and Austrian economic perspective. My most recent significant legal publication is International Investment, Political Risk, and Dispute Resolution: A Practitioner’s Guide (co-author; 2^nd ed., Oxford University Press, 2020). Others include Louisiana Civil Law Dictionary (Quid Pro Books, 2011) and Against Intellectual Property (Mises Institute, 2008), which won the Mises Institute’s O.P. Alford III Prize for scholarly article published during 2001–2002 that best advances libertarian scholarship.

I’ve published numerous articles on law as well as legal theory and policy, in law reviews, trade publications, and scholarly journals, including Louisiana Law Review, Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly, St. Mary’s Law Journal, Griffith Law Review, Texas Oil & Gas Law Journal, Business Ethics Quarterly, New York Law School Journal of International and Comparative Law, Whittier Law Review, Southern University Law Review, The Licensing Journal, and the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics and chapters in books, including The Dialectics of Liberty (Lexington Books, 2019) and Handbook of the Philosophical Foundations of Business Ethics (Springer, 2013).

In addition to my many years practicing IP law and publishing books and in journals, I have extensive experience editing legal books and scholarly journals, including:

• Editor or co-editor for several years of various legal treatises published by major publishing houses, including:
  • Trademark Practice and Forms(Oceana/Oxford, 2001–2011; West/Thomson Reuters 2011–2013)
  • World Online Business Law(Oceana 2003-2011)
  • Digest of Commercial Laws of the World(Oceana/Oxford 1998–2011; West/Thomson Reuters 2011–2013)
  • Online Contract Formation(Oceana 2004)
• Book review editor for the Journal of Libertarian Studies (Mises Institute, 2000-2004)
• Founder and managing/executive editor, Libertarian Papers (Mises Institute/Center for the Study of Innovative Freedom, 2009-2018)
• Co-editor, Property, Freedom, and Society: Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Mises Institute, 2009)
• Editor-in-Chief/Founding member, Pennsylvania Bar Association IP Law Section Newsletter (1997–98)

In addition, I have served as a referee for numerous scholarly books and academic journal articles for a wide number of journals and publishers over the years.

Based on the foregoing, I believe I am well-suited to serve in an editorial capacity for a scholarly intellectual property journal such as the AIPLA Quarterly Journal. Further elaboration on the above information is found on the attached CV.

Thank you for your consideration. Please contact me if you have any questions or need any further information.

Sincerely,

N. Stephan Kinsella

1. “A Tour Through Walter Block’s Oeuvre,” text at n.6. [↩]
2. Copyright is Unconstitutional. [↩]
3. Intellectual Property Rights as Negative Servitudes. [↩]
4. The Overwhelming Empirical Case Against Patent and Copyright; “There’s No Such Thing as a Free Patent.” [↩]