I used to think Intellectual Property (IP) was valid. Why wouldn’t I? After all, my business school insisted patents were vitally necessary to incentivize production and innovation. Even Ayn Rand, my gateway to libertarianism, insisted IP was a moral necessity, saying:
“Patents and copyrights are the legal implementation of the base of all property rights: a man’s right to the product of his mind.”
Ash Navabi, former GMU econ grad student (see previous podcast discussion with him),1 now a law student at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, sent me this presentation he gave in his copyright class: “This Week in Copyright: Copywrong? The Legal & Economic Case for the Abolition of Intellectual Property” (pptx; pdf). Heroic!
In a recent podcast episode, Greenland, Guns, and Money, Richard Epstein predicts Trump’s use of tariffs under IEEPA might be nixed by the Supreme Court, and that he has suggested that if this happens he will find some other way to do it, but it’s not clear what.
Shownotes:President Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick pride themselves on being dealmakers and on making the kind of unconventional deals for America no one else could have gotten done. Gil Hyatt is offering them one that sounds like a no-brainer. However, the question remains whether that dealmaking reputation is enough to overcome thirty years of inertia from prior administrations focused on keeping any more of Hyatt’s patents from ever issuing.Hyatt is proposing to donate his foundational AI patents to the Pioneering AI Foundation, designed, in his telling, to give the U.S. government a new kind of leverage at the International Trade Commission (ITC) to use in negotiations with foreign countries. The concept aligns with the administration’s priorities and arrives at a moment when the administration’s biggest leverage tool — tariffs — has just been narrowed by the Supreme Court’s February ruling.When Hyatt was last on Clause 8 in 2019, he told the story of his role pioneering the microprocessor and the substantial licensing program he built without ever going to court. But much of that conversation was about what came next.
In the mid-1990s, amid scrutiny of so-called “submarine patents,” the USPTO created what was later revealed as the SAWS program, which flagged applications from Hyatt and fellow independent inventor Jerome Lemelson and, in effect, kept any more of their applications from issuing as patents. Hyatt later won a unanimous Supreme Court decision against the USPTO in 2012 in litigation arising from that long-running dispute. But that did not lead to any broader resolution. The government kept fighting. More than a decade later, the battle still continues, with another cert petition now pending before the Supreme Court.
None of that makes Hyatt an obvious candidate to be offering the U.S. government anything, let alone a gift.
And yet that is exactly how he frames it: a gift to America, timed to the country’s 250th birthday. On the episode, Hyatt says the administration has “been considering our project for over a year now,” though he is still waiting to see whether it will move forward. As he tells it, the decision is now theirs.
A Strategic Tool
Hyatt explains that the foundation’s mission is to use intellectual property to “level the playing field” for American workers and American interests. Beyond providing leverage in negotiations, he describes a model in which market access could be conditioned on whether foreign manufacturers meet American standards for labor, human rights, and environmental protections — in other words, whether they are willing to play by rules comparable to those imposed on American companies.
Why Give It Away?
Asked why he would hand this to the same government that spent decades blocking his patents, Hyatt doesn’t hesitate:
“America is the dream of immigrants. My parents were legal immigrants. They came over legally, over 100 years ago. And America gave us the dream life… I want to repay America.”
Can this administration finally get it done?
The offer is on the table. It aligns with the administration’s priorities just as its biggest leverage tool has been constrained.
The question isn’t whether this administration will entertain it. By Hyatt’s account, they have been — for over a year. The real question is whether a dealmaker reputation is enough to close a deal no other administration has come close to making in thirty years.
Hyatt says he is ready to sign.
Will America accept the gift?
The episode covers:
00:23 — the ongoing battle with the USPTO
02:44 — the Pioneering AI Foundation
05:35 — using the ITC and trade agreements as leverage
07:11 — human rights and labor unions: leveling the global playing field
10:24 — AI in the classroom: the “super headstart” for children
12:35 — relieving drudgery: AI as a catalyst for creative thinking
14:27 — addressing skepticism: motives and financials
16:16 — repaying the dream: the legacy of immigrant parents
17:34 — advice for the next generation of inventors
18:22 — final thoughts: destiny and helping America [↩]
I often rail against IP because it impedes innovation.1 As I wrote in one post,
Patent law distorts and impedes innovation. It makes us all poorer. There is no evidence that it does what the retarded Founders thought it would do—promote the progress of the useful arts (inventions)
… Patent law reduces innovation and impoverishes the human race. As I wrote elsewhere: [continue reading…]
I woke up this morning to my daily NY Times news brief email, only to find embedded therein this propaganda, the “Stealing Isn’t Innovation” campaign, which is “a project of the Human Artistry Campaign, a global coalition of more than 180 groups around the world supporting responsible, ethical AI.” The letter’s A and I in the slogan are highlighted in blue to drive the point home—this is about killing AI. It’s a group of artists and other copyright whores who want to shakedown AI tech companies with the threat of killing it with copyright. [continue reading…]
As a friend told me, “I saw this article, and thought you might either be amused or horrified as congress attempts to use copyright law to solve problems caused by … copyright law.”
Patent holders just hate any challenges to their state-granted patent monopolies.1 They want their IP rights to be treated like “property rights,”2 and never challenged, either administratively or in court, so that they can be “relied upon”3 and serve as more effective weapons to threaten and extort their victims.4 They also hate legislative proposals that would make it more difficult to engage in patent trolling,5 such as The Litigation Transparency Act of 20256 or the more recent bill proposed by Representative Daryl Issa, The Protecting Third Party Litigation Funding from Abuse Act.7[continue reading…]
US Inventor, INVENTOR RIGHTS RESOLUTION, which, in crayon, writes “The USPTO MUST NOT REVIEW AN ISSUED PATENT WITHOUT CONSENT OF THE INVENTOR.” [↩]
See also “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) [Audio: KOL445]. [↩]
Jeffrey Tucker’s recent article, “Small Steps Toward Medical Freedom,” The Epoch Times (Jan. 6, 2026) has several provocative “urgent priorities for U.S. medical-insurance reform”. Writes Tucker: [continue reading…]
These geniuses seem to attack capitalism and lack of competition, and identify some extensions or uses patent and copyright (intellectual property), but they do not condemn IP per se. No one can ever clearly see the problem or strike at the root. https://t.co/jPzMozEwFn…
“advocates for IP often cannot distinguish patent, copyright, trademark, and trade secret from each other (and yet support them anyway)” The Problem with Intellectual Property, n.30
“IP has nothing to do with plagiarism or fraud. This is a common confusion, often deliberately and dishonestly spread by those with vested IP interests trying to defend IP law; or by people who are ignorant about the differences yet feel compelled to pontificate on this topic in public anyway.” Intellectual Property Discussion with Mark Skousen
Art doesn’t belong to the artist even before it’s public. Information is not ownable since it does not exist independently, it needs a substrate or carrier; it is just the way an underlying object is arranged or impatterned. The physical object itself which is impatterned is…
Which Path for Patent Challenges? The USPTO’s “One-Challenge” NPRM for Inter Partes Review (Nov. 20, 2025), a recent Federalist Society panel webinar discussing the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) titled “Revision to Rules of Practice Before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board,” which proposes significant changes to how inter partes review (IPR) petitions are instituted. [continue reading…]
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.
Follow Us!