Below is the first draft of a working paper published under the Papinian Press Working Papers series. I expect a version of this to be published later this year as “The Problem with Intellectual Property,” in Handbook of the Philosophical Foundations of Business Ethics, 2nd ed., Marianne Thejls Ziegler and Christoph Lütge, eds. (Springer, forthcoming 2025; Robert McGee, section ed.). This is a totally new piece which replace my contribution in the first edition of the Handbook, Stephan Kinsella, “The Case Against Intellectual Property,” in Handbook of the Philosophical Foundations of Business Ethics (Prof. Dr. Christoph Lütge, ed.; Springer, 2013) (chapter 68, in Part 18, “Property Rights: Material and Intellectual,” Robert McGee, section ed.)
Files: pdf; word. Here is quick-and-dirty and uneditedepub converted automatically from the word file.
O’Keeffe is right to call for scaling back patent protection as real solution here, as they are a primary driver of absurdly high drug prices. Given that patents exist and cause the price of pharmaceuticals to be higher than market prices, however, I am not sure that a government price control (which I do not see clearly being proposed by Trump’s Executive Order anyway)1 would have the same effects as price controls of market prices.
And since Big Pharma lobbies for and takes advantage of the state’s patent system, I would not shed tears for them being subject to antitrust or other regulations. After all, the state hands out patents to allow companies to charge monopoly prices but then schizophrenically penalizes monopoly prices with its antitrust laws. Hence, the patent grant comes with a sort of built in limitation: don’t take too much advantage of this evil patent right we are giving you, or we might come after you. The fact that they are selling drugs in other markets at a fraction of the cost, and still at a profit, presumably, is a good indicator that they are, indeed, “abusing” the patent right they are given.
After people have grasped what the NAP (Non Aggression Principle) is and understand the basic implications of establishing this principle as law it is not hard to see what of our current society would remain the same and what would change. [continue reading…]
Overall I agree that IP is greatly overhyped but I’d not agree (at this stage) to abolish it entirely. Also, drawing a theoretical link between obesity and… https://t.co/OghrUyjip3
See his post Sanjeev Sabhlok, “Against intellectual property? – a placeholder post,” Sanjeev Sabhlok’s blog: Thoughts on economics and liberty (Oct. 26, 2016), and also the pro-IP post by Rogan that he links. Both below.
In a report in The New York Times this week, judges, scholars and executives said that in technology fields, “the marketplace for new ideas has been corrupted by software patents used as destructive weapons.” But certainly the protections for intellectual property – like pharmaceuticals, movies and other inventions – also fuel creativity, in part by giving investors enough confidence to open their wallets.
On balance, does intellectual property law encourage or discourage innovation?
Intellectual property law is supposed to spur experimentation, PM contributor and Instapundit blogger Glenn Reynolds writes, not deter it. But the patent and copyright laws of yesteryear are ill-equipped for the world of 2013.
“Too much of a good thing,” Mae West supposedly said, “can be wonderful.” Is that true? Maybe in some cases, but probably not where patents and copyrights are concerned. [continue reading…]
Paragraph 1 (0:00-1:34): The speaker begins by engaging the audience in singing “Happy Birthday to You,” revealing afterward that it’s not actually their birthday and that performing the song publicly could be illegal due to its copyright status (1:12-1:29). This serves as an entry point to discuss the broader topic of copyright and patents, which are legal tools designed to promote innovation and creativity (1:37-1:40). The speaker emphasizes that the purpose of these systems is to ensure more innovation, with exclusive rights being merely a means to that end (1:49-2:02). They propose evaluating the intellectual property system through three questions: Is the theory valid? Does it work empirically? And is it fair? (2:13-2:32).
Paragraph 2 (1:46-4:57): The speaker critiques the theoretical flaws of intellectual property, starting with the absurdity of enforcing copyright for “Happy Birthday to You,” a song nearly a century old by deceased authors, which fails to promote creativity (2:43-3:07). They highlight the blurred line between imitation and innovation by comparing “Happy Birthday” to “Good Morning to You,” noting that the distinction between a copy and an original is problematic (3:17-4:24). This rigid separation ignores the reality that innovation often builds on imitation, creating a continuum rather than a dichotomy (4:27-4:46). Additionally, the theory overlooks the role of distributors, who profit disproportionately (e.g., Warner Music Group earning $2 million in 2008 from “Happy Birthday”) while artists receive minimal benefits (5:01-5:48).
Paragraph 3 (5:54-8:52): Turning to empirical evidence, the speaker argues that intellectual property may hinder innovation. They point to the software industry, where open-source models, free of intellectual property restrictions, consistently outperform proprietary systems like Microsoft (6:26-7:04). In healthcare, they challenge the notion that patents are essential, noting that over 90% of major medical breakthroughs occurred without intellectual property involvement (7:17-7:50). Furthermore, pharmaceutical companies often prioritize “Me Too” patents—minor tweaks to existing drugs—over groundbreaking research, misusing their monopoly power (8:01-8:46). This suggests that intellectual property may slow innovation rather than foster it.
Paragraph 4 (8:55-12:39): The speaker questions the fairness of intellectual property from an evolutionary perspective, arguing that human culture thrives on trust and the sharing of ideas, which intellectual property restricts by promoting ownership and monetization (8:55-10:13). They compare this to the flawed mercantilism system, which prioritized exports over imports, ignoring their interdependence (10:16-10:49). The impact is evident in cultural production, where 80% of 20th-century works remain locked under copyright, limiting access and creativity (10:55-11:43). The speaker advocates for a system that encourages sharing and modifying works, like playful derivatives of “Happy Birthday,” to foster innovation without fear of criminalization (11:56-12:33).
I was sightseeing earlier this week in Istanbul with my friends Greg Morin and Jay Baykal, a local. There were knockoff clothes and purses everywhere—in the Grand Bazaar, in the streets nearby, and so on. As I’ve pointed out before, trademark law is unjust.1 It prohibits the sale of goods even when the consumers are not defrauded or confused—everyone knows that they are buying imitations.
We were looking at some of the cheaper knockoffs and Jay told me that the really good ones are more expensive and are so good you can’t even tell—these are called “genuine fakes.” Great expression. Down with IP. [continue reading…]
The state regulates pharmaceuticals by laws and regulations that require prescriptions, FDA approvals, and so on. It distorts the market by regulating healthcare—inflating the price of insurance by prohibiting insurers taking into account pre-existing conditions, by tax rules that remove consumer choice from the payment, and so on. It inflates the prices of pharmaceuticals by granting patents and by imposing the huge regulatory burdens and cost of the FDA process, and by increasing demand for such pharmaceuticals from Medicare and Medicaid purchases. And then it tries to “negotiate” for lower prices, which causes much squawking.
Every second your body makes 2.83 million new cells. If you studied just one of those cells from a single human—sequencing all the DNA, RNA, and proteins, you would generate more data than can fit in Google, Microsoft, and Amazon’s datacenters combined. Cancer is an information problem.
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Mitosis refers to the process where a cell splits and takes about 2 hours. If you were building a startup and it was the fastest startup ever and your team doubled in size every month, you would be going at 0.0028 the speed of mitosis. Mitosis is very very fast.
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We think our information tools have gotten fast because we compare them to our old tools, but when we compare them to the challenge of mitosis and cancer they are slower than molasses.
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Copyright laws are intellectual slavery, and slow down our cancer researchers and healthcare workers to crawling speed. Because of our expanding copyright laws, our information tools are far too slow and as a result our cancer survival rates haven’t budged in a century.
Bad ideas survive far too long before evolving into good ideas in an information environment with copyright.
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We can either cure cancer or have copyright laws. We cannot do both. Mitosis is too fast and we need our information tools to be much, much faster. We need them to be orders of magnitude faster.
Voices For Liberty: Essays Against Copyright and Patent Law, compiled by Breck Yunits (2025). As explained in About page, this compilation is based in part on my own collection, Stephan Kinsella, ed., The Anti-IP Reader: Free Market Critiques of Intellectual Property (Papinian Press, 2023). Yunits’s selection contains many of those featured in my collection and also some others not included in mine. Yunits’ compilation is thus neither a subset nor superset of mine but an intersecting set. In any case, a very useful anti-IP resource.
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.
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