≡ Menu

Craig Wright: The Price of Ideas and the Optimal Patent Term

by on June 21, 2026

Related

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.

In any case, if his case for an optimal patent term being nonzero was so clear, why has this not occurred to those searching for evidence that the patent system does any good? See The Overwhelming Empirical Case Against Patent and Copyright; “The Problem with Intellectual Property,” Part III.B.5; “Law and Intellectual Property in a Stateless Society,” Part III.A; Against Intellectual Property After Twenty Years: Looking Back and Looking Forward, in LFFS, Part IV.A.

Writes Wright:

Before the evidence, the mechanism — because you cannot weigh a trade-off you have not drawn. Figure 1 is the standard monopoly diagram, and it contains, in one picture, both the libertarian’s complaint and the economist’s reply.

Three regions follow. The blue rectangle is producer surplus — the wedge (P_m − c) × Q_m. This is the only region that can repay the cost of expression F. Knock it out and the fixed cost is unrecoverable. The red triangle is the deadweight loss: the buyers who value the good above c but below P_m, who would have been served under competition and are not served under monopoly. This is the static cost of intellectual property, and — this is the point worth sitting with — Kinsella and Boldrin and Levine are simply correct that it exists. There is no honest version of the pro-IP argument that denies the red triangle. The green region is the consumer surplus that survives.

The orthodox claim is not that the red triangle is illusory. It is that, in the absence of the blue rectangle, the good is not produced, so the relevant comparison is not “monopoly versus competition” but “monopoly versus nothing.” If the work would exist either way, IP is pure deadweight loss and the abolitionist wins on that work. If the work exists only because of the blue rectangle, then the consumer surplus it generates — the entire area under the demand curve above price — is a benefit that would otherwise be zero, and it must be set against the triangle. Which case obtains is, again, empirical. So let us go and measure.

In any case, after more of this, he produces some curve, reminiscent of the Tabarrok Curve,2 where, as best I can tell, he insinuates the patent term is around 12 years. Okay, Craig.

 

This whole thing is painful.

Basically, as he reveals in one of his tweets, he wants some committee of experts to fine-tune the IP system and to make all kinds of optimal distinctions on the scope and length of patent term of all types of inventions and works of art, and who knows what other types of IP:

The first fallacy is the false dilemma. My position is not “finite IP or perpetual IP, choose one.” That is his little wooden box, not mine. The actual position is that intellectual creations can generate legitimate property interests, and that different categories of intellectual property may have different legal incidents, scopes, terms, remedies, and limits. Patent is not copyright. Copyright is not trade mark. Trade mark is not trade secret. Trade secret is not passing off. Design rights are not reputation. These are different juridical structures protecting different interests.

… The fourth fallacy is the straw man. I have not argued that every patent and copyright must last forever. I have not argued that every thought floating through someone’s head should be fenced off until the sun burns out. The argument is that invention, authorship, disclosure, confidential knowledge, commercial identity, goodwill, and reputation can be economically valuable interests capable of legal protection. Law then calibrates the protection according to the nature of the asset. That is not contradiction. That is legal architecture.

Ha. Just let the experts handle it! They are so wise! This appears to be the view of the Randians, who think you just leave it to the experts to figure out the right term. They just need to “properly calibrate” it.3 After all, there is nothing wrong with legislation; according to Objectivist IP shill Murray Franck, “The same minds that employ induction and deduction to decide a particular case, making common law, can employ those methods to legislate universal laws.”4 Or J. Neil Schulman’s view that you could have the legal system determine on a case by case basis the “right” patent or logoright term length using information and probability theory to estimate how long it likely would have taken someone else to independently re-invent the patented item. As I wrote in The Patent Eligibility Restoration Act, n.3:

Adam Mossoff & Eric Claeys, “Patent Injunctions, Economics, and Rights“; Christopher B. Seaman, “Permanent Injunctions in Patent Litigation After eBay: An Empirical Study“. These support finite terms for patents, even though the number is totally arbitrary: “the exclusionary rights secured by a patent should account for “how long it would have taken, in the absence of knowledge of the invention, for independent discovery” resulting from the productive labors of others.43 This concern is addressed by duration limits.44″ (P. 7) It’s hard to believe they seriously believe that Congress knows and had determined what the “right” patent term should be. 17 years? Why? Why should it be the same for all types of patents? Why shouldn’t the courts or the PTO figure it out? Jesus Christ, how can they bear to repeat such utter nonsense! This was the same stupid shit Neil Schulman proposed, as I noted elsewhere: “which is what J. Neil Schulman proposes in his logorights idea–just have some panel of “experts” use “information theory” to figure out how long each patent should last–1.3 years for this one. 26 years for that one. and so on.” See Optimal Patent and Copyright Term Length. As Schulman writes: “Taking the “lowering entropy” argument too far into the area of physical thermodynamics runs one quickly into problems of both fact and theory; the comparative “entropy levels” of a car, a piece of junk, and a chunk of ore are incalculable. Nevertheless, I believe the “entropic” paradigm of regarding creation as a “calculable increase in improbability” is sound within the context of information theory, where one discusses the “entropy” of a signal; and, in fact, I’m told there are existing formulas, used by the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI), to calculate the “improbabilities” of a signal being a “natural” occurrence as opposed to being artificially generated “information.” J. Neil Schulman, Origitent: Why Original Content is Property (Steve Heller Publishing, 2018), p. 40. And now you have these guys buying into this. What’s their authority? Nozick’s dilettantish remarks in his anarchy book; he didn’t know anything about IP law, or even how to justify rights! Oh, and Ayn Rand, who made up some makeweight argument. And of course the Congress and the US Code that “says” what the patent term is. Oh, that’s some proof! See also Yaron Brook on the Appropriate Copyright Term; Hawley Introduces Bill to Reduce the Copyright Term; Reason: Copyright Should Last Half A Century; and see the remarks on copyright term and related matters by Tom Bell and Jerry Brito in Tom Bell on copyright reform; the Hayekian knowledge problem and copyright terms.

This is all the gibberish Wright believes: there should be different types of IP, different categories, scopes, terms, maybe it’s infinite, maybe not, maybe different for patent than for copyright, maybe different for different types of patents…. it’s not a natural right at all, don’t worry about it expiring at an arbitrary time determined by some benevolent and omniscient panel of government experts… What total nonsense.

***

Recent tweets

 

  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.” [↩]
  2. Tabarrok: Patent Policy on the Back of a Napkin. [↩]
  3. Reason’s Tim Lee on Two Decades of Attempts to Enforce Copyright. [↩]
  4. Letter on Intellectual Property Rights, IOS Journal (June 1995). [↩]
Share
{ 0 comments… add one }

Leave a Comment

Previous post:

The Center for the Study of Innovative Freedom (C4SIF) is dedicated to building public awareness of the manner in which so-called “intellectual property” (IP) laws and policies impede innovation, creativity, communication, learning, knowledge, emulation, and information sharing. We are for property rights, free markets, competition, commerce, cooperation, and the voluntary sharing of knowledge, and oppose IP laws, which systematically impede or hamper innovation. IP law should be completely and immediately abolished.

We provide news commentary and analysis and scholarly resources from our unique pro-property, pro-market, pro-innovation perspective.

Archives

The Problem with Intellectual Property

A Selection of my Best Articles and Speeches on IP

Classical Liberals, Libertarians, Anarchists and Others on Intellectual Property

The Overwhelming Empirical Case Against Patent and Copyright

Defamation as a Type of Intellectual Property

[From my Webnote series]

Webnotes

IP Answer Man

This site rocks the Classic Responsive Skin for Thesis.

WP Admin