C4IP and C-IP2: For IP, not Innovation

by Stephan Kinsella on October 1, 2026

Economic Freedom of the World Rankings and Intellectual Property: The United States’ Bad Ranking is Even Worse Than Reported
USPTO/Commerce Dept. Distortions: “IP Contributes $5 Trillion and 40 Million Jobs to Economy”
“Radical Patent Reform Is Not on the Way”

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. We are not against IP just for the hell of it, but because we recognize that IP law violates property rights, is unjust, commits aggression, restricts human freedom, impedes and distorts innovation, creativity, free expression, artistic freedom, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press.

There are other groups with similar names/acronyms that should not be conflated with C4SIF. 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–). At least they are anti-IP, so we have something in common.²

But the two most problematically-acronymously-similar centers, first 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, secondly, the recently formed Council for Innovation Promotion (C4IP).³ C4SIF, C4SS, CPIP, C-IP2, C4IP. That’s enough to trip anyone up.

But C-IP2 and C4IP are just IP shills. They are not in favor of innovation; they are in favor of IP law. In fact, C-IP2 née CPIP was more explicit about this initially: its name was “Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property”; it was not hiding this. It did not pretend that its mission was to explore whether IP promoted innovation. Anymore than the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA) is for innovation. No, innovation was irrelevant to CPIP; 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 and impossible to remember C-IP2.⁵ 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 Stewart, was interviewed recently by another patent shill, Gene Quinn, in The Fight to Fix America’s Patent System.

Of course in addition to those with names somewhat confusingly similar (to use a trademark term) to C4SIF, there are any number of pro-IP shill organizations, many of whom pretend to also favor innovation, based of course on the false correlation between innovation and IP.⁶ These include the WIPO itself, and another one that pulled the same PR stunt as “Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property” (CPIP) did when it changed its name to C-IP2 to pose as pro-innovation instead of being a group simply aiming to provide ideological cover to IP law and its special interest beneficiaries: to-wit, the Global Intellectual Property Center of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, founded in 2007; I guess it also sounded too much like a shill organization concerned with the special interest beneficiaries of IP law instead of innovation, so it was renamed the Global Innovation Policy Center (GIPC) in December 2017. So, with a little help from Grok, I append a larger list in the Appendix, including those mentioned already plus a few others. What’s ironic is that almost everyone is in favor of IP, so it’s a bit risible that all these supporters of IP fascism keep whining that IP is “under attack.” This is just their desperate attempt to keep the Overton window narrow so the talk is always about minor and tepid IP “reform” but never radical reform and never IP abolition, as I note in “Radical Patent Reform Is Not on the Way.” Note that these groups are always “bi-partisan”; being in favor of IP seems to be the only thing left and right agree on.⁷ See, e.g. the recent anti-AI and pro-IP comments of Alexandria Occasional-Cortex (a mocking parody of her name that annoys regime stuffed shirts like “Noah Smith”):⁸

“Your data should belong to you… we need to understand these systems. AI, data, all of this are founded on theft. They are stealing what is yours — your face, your behaviors, your privacy. We have a right to privacy in the United States of America. And they are violating it and monetizing off of it.”

“Your data should be yours. Your privacy should be yours. And even when we look at how these AI LLMs were even built in the first place, they were built on stealing the work of writers and people everywhere… they often did not pay for the books. They did not pay for the news articles… they are using it and they are monetizing off of it. And it was one of the largest acts of intellectual theft in history in order to create these systems. And what they’re doing now is going into the theft of your privacy.”⁹

Wow, what does she have against people making a monetary profit? What is she, like the Mises Institute, an opponent of people making a profit?¹⁰

***

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).¹¹ This was even before I wrote my initial systematic attacks on IP in 2000 and 2001.¹²

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.¹³ 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.”

Appendix: Pro-IP Lobbying Groups and Shills Falsely Posing as Pro-Innovation

Center for Intellectual Property x Innovation Policy (C-IP2) (George Mason / Scalia Law; founded by Adam Mossoff and Mark Schultz as the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property (CPIP), later renamed. The old name said the quiet part out loud: protection of IP, not a study of whether IP promotes innovation. The new name assumes, contra evidence, that IP “facilitates” innovation.)
Council for Innovation Promotion (C4IP) (launched 2022 by former USPTO directors; bipartisan advocacy group whose mission is “strong and effective intellectual property rights,” on the assumption that IP drives innovation. Board includes Andrei Iancu, David Kappos, Paul Michel,¹⁴ and Kathleen O’Malley.)
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) (UN specialized agency, founded 1967 as the successor to the 19th-century bureaus for the Paris and Berne Conventions. Its mandate is to promote the protection of intellectual property worldwide. It administers the PCT, Madrid, Hague, and the other main registration systems, and it treats wider and stronger IP protection as the goal, not an open question.)
Global Innovation Policy Center (GIPC) (U.S. Chamber affiliate; founded in 2007 as the Global Intellectual Property Center and renamed in December 2017. It kept the acronym. The stated reason was that the old name was too narrow and the new one better covered a broader “innovation” agenda; in practice the mission did not change. It still advocates “strong IP standards,” publishes the International IP Index,¹⁵ and treats stronger IP protection as the way to get more innovation. Same rhetorical move as CPIP to C-IP2.)
International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property (AIPPI) (Swiss-based association, founded 1897, about 8,000 members; its object is to improve and promote the protection of IP, including court and legislative submissions for stronger and more harmonized IP laws.)
International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) (copyright-industry umbrella since 1984, including the film, music, software, and publishing associations; files Special 301 and notorious-markets submissions pushing foreign governments to tighten copyright enforcement.)
Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO) (trade association of corporate IP owners since 1972; lobbies Congress, the USPTO, and USTR for “effective” patent, trademark, copyright, and trade-secret rights, and has jointly pushed § 101 legislation with AIPLA to widen patent eligibility.)
American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA) (national bar association of IP lawyers, agents, and corporate counsel; formed to improve IP laws and their interpretation, and a reliable advocate for strong IP protection rather than for innovation as such.)
US IP Alliance (USIPA) (network of state “IP Alliances”; slogan is that IP “drives society forward.” Board overlaps with C4IP, including Kappos, Michel, and Iancu.)
Association of Intellectual Property Firms (AIPF) (association of independent IP boutique firms; a professional guild for firms whose business is prosecuting and litigating IP, not a policy skeptic.)
FICPI (Fédération Internationale des Conseils en Propriété Intellectuelle; international body limited to IP attorneys in private practice, and explicit that it advocates for them and for the IP system they practice in.)
ABA Section of Intellectual Property Law (largest U.S. organization of IP professionals, dating to 1894; a bar section devoted to the development and practice of IP law, not to questioning it.)