I formed the Center for the Study of Innovative Freedom (C4SIF) back in October 20131 to separate my libertarian-related anti-IP writings from my other IP writings and to form a center dedicated to freedom and innovation. As our mission statement in the sidebar clearly states:
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.
In other words, we are against IP because we are in favor of innovation and property rights, and freedom, liberty, and justice.
There are other groups with similar names that should not be conflated with us. One is the left-libertarian Center for a Stateless Society (C4SS). I used to be a member of its Advisory Panel, but I resigned in 2015 for various reasons; I remain a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the associated Molinari Review (2014–). But at least they are anti-IP, so we have something in common.2
But the two most problematic are the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property (CPIP) at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, spearheaded by pro-IP Objectivist law professor Adam Mossoff and now awkwardly re-named the Center for Intellectual Property x Innovation Policy (C-IP2); and the recently formed Council for Innovation Promotion (C4IP).3 Both are just IP shills, masquerading as favoring “innovation.” They are not in favor of innovation; they are in favor of IP law. C-IP2 née CPIP was more explicit about this initially: its name was “Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property”; it was not hiding that it was about exploring whether IP promoted innovation. No, innovation was irrelevant; it was just assumed that IP promoted innovation.4 I guess they got the memo that this was not a good look, so they changed to the awkward C-IP2. As its landing page now states,
Originally named the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property, it was founded by Professor Adam Mossoff and Professor Mark F. Schultz for the scholarly analysis of intellectual property rights and the technological, commercial, and creative innovation they facilitate.”
Well I guess if IP “facilitate” “innovation,” and if innovation is good, you have to be in favor of IP, amirite? It’s just a now brainer, right? Nevermind The Overwhelming Empirical Case Against Patent and Copyright.
The Council for Innovation Promotion (C4IP) rests on similar assumptions:
The Council for Innovation Promotion is a bipartisan coalition dedicated to promoting strong and effective intellectual property rights that drive innovation, boost economic competitiveness, and improve lives everywhere.
The founder, technocrat Coke Morgan Steward, was interviewed recently by another patent shill, Gene Quinn, in The Fight to Fix America’s Patent System.
When I first realized IP was corrupt, I tried to get my fellow IP lawyers to question the IP system they swam in. To alert them. I was naive. When I was a young patent law associate at a large law firm in Philadelphia, for example, I wrote an editorial for the Pennsylvania Bar Association IP section newsletter (of which I was editor), “Is Intellectual Property Legitimate?” (1998).5 This was even before I wrote my initial systematic attacks on IP in 2000 and 2001.6
I should have realized it was hopeless to try to reach fellow patent lawyers, though there are a few that have the courage or intelligence or integrity to admit it’s a terrible system.7 After all, as Upton Sinclair observed, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
- See Kinsella, “Announcing the C4SIF,” C4SIF Blog (Oct. 13, 2010). [↩]
- Kevin Carson, Intellectual Property — A Libertarian Critique; Roderick Long, “Bye-Bye for IP,” Austro-Athenian Empire Blog (May 20, 2010), Owning Ideas Means Owning People, The Libertarian Case Against Intellectual Property Rights, Thoughtcrime, Bear Becomes Mushroom; Trout Implicated; Comments on Bedirhanoğlu and Schaefer. [↩]
- Former USPTO Directors Launch Bipartisan Advocacy Organization Dedicated to Promoting and Defending U.S. Innovation (Sept. 22, 2022). [↩]
- See Kinsella, More defenses of IP by the Federalist Society:
E.g. they often feature Adam Mossoff, an Objectivist, not even a conservative or libertarian, of the “Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property“. Note: Not for the study of IP—but for its protection. Not for the promotion or protection of innovation, but of “intellectual property” itself. Hmm, wonder if they have an agenda? Yep. Wonder if it is compatible with libertarianism at all? Nope.
And idem, The Overwhelming Empirical Case Against Patent and Copyright. [↩]
- Kinsella, “Is Intellectual Property Legitimate?,” PBA IP Law Newsletter 1 (Winter 1998): 3; republished in the Federalist Society’s Intellectual Property Practice Group Newsletter, vol. 3, Issue 3 (Winter 2000); audio: KOL445. [↩]
- “In Defense of Napster and Against the Second Homesteading Rule,” LewRockwell.com (Sept. 4, 2000); Against Intellectual Property (Mises Institute, 2008 [2001]). [↩]
- Patent Lawyers Who Oppose Patent Law; Pro-IP “Anarchists” and anti-IP Patent Attorneys; Miracle–An Honest Patent Attorney!; An Anti-Patent Patent Attorney? Oh my Gawd!; Are anti-IP patent attorneys hypocrites? [↩]
