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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 467.

I was asked one Juani (@witheredsummer), an Argentinian Voluntarist, on Twitter and then later via email, to review his draft article “Ideas Are Free: A Case Against Intellectual Property” (text below) (I note that perhaps ironically, this title is almost identical to one of my own previous publications/speeches, Ideas are Free: The Case Against Intellectual Property: or, How Libertarians Went Wrong). I told him it was too long for me to fisk, got Grok to analyze it (see below), and told him to read up on some of my work and review the analysis, so that we could have a more productive conversation about it, and which I could also at least record for my podcast. This is our discussion.

In the end, he basically identifies many problems with and absurdities with IP law, which he’s right about and which I’ve mentioned, and comes up with some proposals for IP reform that would reduce its harm—again, which he’s right about and which I and others have also proposed, but also which are unlikely to be adopted by those infested with the IP mind-virus.

GROK SHOWNOTES:

[0:00-15:00] In this episode of the Stephan Kinsella podcast (KOL467), host Stephan Kinsella engages with Juani from Argentina to discuss intellectual property (IP) and its implications, particularly in the context of artificial intelligence (AI). Juani, a programmer and self-described libertarian, shares his consequentialist critique of IP, influenced by Kinsella’s work and his own essay, “Ideas for Free: A Case Against Intellectual Property.” The conversation begins with Juani outlining his concerns about IP’s practical harms, such as its impact on innovation and culture, and transitions into a discussion about AI. They explore how AI’s reliance on vast datasets, often containing copyrighted material, raises legal questions about copying, authorship, and derivative works. Kinsella highlights the tension between copyright law and AI development, noting that current laws could stifle AI’s potential by limiting data access or imposing costly licensing requirements.

Youtube Transcript and detailed Grok shownotes below.

Related:

• KOL466 | On IP Reform and Improving IP law
• FDA and Patent Reform: A Modest Proposal
• “Absurd Arguments for IP”
• “The Patent, Copyright, Trademark, and Trade Secret Horror Files”
• Boldrin & Levine on Covid-19, Vaccines, the Pharmaceutical Industry, and Patents
• Patents and Pharmaceuticals
• Update: Patents Kill: Compulsory Licenses and Genzyme’s Life Saving Drug
• Patents Kill: Compulsory Licenses and Genzyme’s Life Saving Drug
• You wouldn’t download a car!
• Whereupon Grok admits it (and AI) is severely gimped by copyright law
• Copyrighting all the melodies to avoid accidental infringement | Damien Riehl
• IP Imperialism
• Libraries: Prepare to burn foreign books, courtesy copyright law (The first-sale doctrine and resale of books)
• Libertarian and IP Answer Man: Artificial Intelligence and IP
• How long copyright terms make art disappear
• Mark Lemley: The Very Basis Of Our Patent System… Is A Myth
• Intellectual Property’s Great Fallacy
• AI and copyright: what future for the UK government’s consultation?
• Forcing UK creatives to ‘opt out’ of AI training risks stifling new talent, Cambridge experts warn
• Infringement risk relating to training a generative AI system
• Copyright Infringement by Generative AI Tools Under US and UK Law: Common Threads and Contrasting Approaches.
• How a US AI ruling could influence UK copyright policy

Juani sent me these links:

• On Milei’s reforms in terms of copyright; in Spanish; in Spanish
• As for that one story of IP in Sybaris, I mentioned it comes from Deipnosophistae, which is an Ancient Greek text. I do owe you the exact reference though, but it is supposed to be about Chapter 20 of Book III, or section 98e of Book 3, or so is cited elsewhere.
• And the book I recommended is a collection of excerpts from the Zhuangzi, many of which echo a Libertarian, pro-spontaneous order message all the way back in the 3rd century BCE. I own a different edition of the book, but the contents should be the same: Thomas Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu

Detailed Grok Shownotes

Grok analysis of Núñez paper:

Thank you for highlighting Stephan Kinsella’s specific argument regarding patent trolls and “bad patents” versus “good patents” and practicing entities, as articulated in his article [“Patent Trolls Are Preferable to Practicing Entities”](https://c4sif.org/2012/05/patent-trolls-are-preferable-to-practicing-entities/). I’ll incorporate this perspective into the analysis of Juani Nunez’s treatment of patent trolls in “Ideas Are Free: A Case Against Intellectual Property,” focusing on whether Nunez demonstrates awareness of Kinsella’s view that the core issue with the patent system lies not with trolls (non-practicing entities, or NPEs) or “bad patents,” but with “good patents” held by practicing entities. I’ll also reassess how this impacts the comparison of their arguments and Nunez’s engagement with Kinsella’s broader critique.

—

### Kinsella’s Argument on Patent Trolls vs. Practicing Entities

In the referenced article, Kinsella argues:
– **Patent Trolls (NPEs) Are Not the Main Problem:** Patent trolls, or non-practicing entities, are firms that hold patents but do not produce products, instead profiting by licensing or suing for infringement. While often criticized for exploiting weak or overly broad patents, Kinsella contends they are a symptom, not the root issue.
– **“Good Patents” and Practicing Entities Are the Real Issue:** Practicing entities (e.g., Apple, Pfizer) that use patents to produce goods or services wield “good patents” (valid, well-crafted ones) to secure monopolies, block competitors, and inflate prices. These patents, often covering critical technologies or drugs, cause greater harm by restricting market access and innovation.
– **Systemic Flaw:** The patent system itself, by granting state-enforced monopolies, is the problem, not the type of patent or holder. Trolls highlight the system’s absurdity, but practicing entities’ monopolistic practices (e.g., pharmaceutical price gouging) have a more significant societal impact.

This view aligns with Kinsella’s broader abolitionist stance in *The Problem With Intellectual Property* and *Legal Foundations of a Free Society* (Ch. 14 and 15), where he argues that all patents, regardless of quality or holder, violate property rights by imposing nonconsensual restrictions on others’ use of their tangible resources.

—

### Nunez’s Treatment of Patent Trolls

In “Ideas Are Free,” Nunez addresses patent trolls in the section “Patent Trolls, Biopiracy and First Come, First Served”:
– **Criticism of Trolls:** He describes patent trolls as entities that “create patents for items or particular ideas, with the hope of being able to sell them for profit, or to sue anyone who use them,” citing cases like NTP vs. Research in Motion ($612.5M settlement) and Eolas vs. Microsoft ($520M overturned). He notes some patents are for “obvious” ideas, exacerbating the issue.
– **Examples:** Nunez highlights lawsuits over minor or intuitive features (e.g., Apple vs. Samsung over rounded corners, Lodsys vs. app developers for in-app purchases), framing trolls as exploiting the system to burden innovators.
– **Broader Context:** He ties trolling to the “first come, first served” nature of patents, which allows non-creators to claim monopolies, but doesn’t explicitly distinguish between NPEs and practicing entities.

Nunez’s critique of patents extends beyond trolls:
– **Pharmaceutical Monopolies:** He extensively discusses practicing entities like insulin manufacturers and AbbVie (Humira), criticizing their use of “patent thickets” and “evergreening” to maintain monopolies, leading to high prices and restricted access (“Monopolies” section).
– **Systemic Harm:** He argues that patents, particularly on essential goods, create artificial scarcity and cost lives (e.g., 10,193 daily COVID-19 deaths linked to vaccine patent barriers), implicating the system’s design rather than just its abusers.

—

### Does Nunez Show Awareness of Kinsella’s Point?

**Awareness of Trolls as Secondary:**
– **Partial Awareness:** Nunez’s focus on patent trolls is limited to their exploitative lawsuits, aligning with Kinsella’s view that trolls expose systemic flaws. However, he doesn’t explicitly state that trolls are less harmful than practicing entities or that “bad patents” are a distraction from the core issue. His examples (e.g., Lodsys, Eolas) target NPE behavior, suggesting he sees trolls as a significant problem, which slightly misaligns with Kinsella’s prioritization.
– **Broader Critique:** Nunez’s extensive discussion of practicing entities’ monopolies (e.g., insulin, Humira) demonstrates awareness of the harm caused by “good patents” held by producers. His examples of pharmaceutical companies using valid patents to block generics mirror Kinsella’s concern with practicing entities’ market distortions. This suggests Nunez implicitly recognizes the greater impact of practicing entities, even if he doesn’t frame it as Kinsella does.

**Engagement with “Good Patents” as the Core Issue:**
– **Alignment:** Nunez’s pharmaceutical examples (e.g., insulin’s patent thickets, Humira’s 200+ patents) focus on valid, enforceable patents used by practicing entities to maintain monopolies, aligning with Kinsella’s argument that “good patents” cause significant harm. His critique of evergreening and patent thickets shows understanding that well-crafted patents, not just vague ones, enable monopolistic abuse.
– **Lack of Explicit Distinction:** Nunez doesn’t directly contrast NPEs with practicing entities or label “good patents” as the primary issue. His discussion blends troll lawsuits with practicing entities’ monopolies, indicating a holistic critique of the patent system but not a precise adoption of Kinsella’s hierarchy of harm.

**Citation Context:**
– Nunez cites Kinsella’s *Against Intellectual Property*, indicating familiarity with his work, but doesn’t reference the specific article on patent trolls ([c4sif.org/2012/05/patent-trolls-are-preferable-to-practicing-entities/](https://c4sif.org/2012/05/patent-trolls-are-preferable-to-practicing-entities/)). His arguments about pharmaceutical monopolies suggest parallel thinking or indirect influence, but he doesn’t explicitly engage Kinsella’s nuanced view on trolls vs. practicing entities.

—

### Impact on Comparison of Arguments

**Revised Comparison:**
– **Shared Systemic Critique:** Both Nunez and Kinsella view the patent system as inherently flawed, granting monopolies that restrict property rights and harm society. Nunez’s focus on pharmaceutical monopolies complements Kinsella’s emphasis on practicing entities’ “good patents,” reinforcing their shared opposition to state-enforced IP.
– **Differing Emphases:** Nunez’s attention to patent trolls as a notable issue slightly diverges from Kinsella’s dismissal of trolls as secondary. However, Nunez’s broader critique of practicing entities’ monopolies aligns closely with Kinsella’s core concern, mitigating this divergence.
– **Theoretical vs. Practical:** Kinsella’s argument is grounded in libertarian property theory, framing all patents as nonconsensual servitudes. Nunez, while citing Kinsella, adopts a more practical, example-driven approach, emphasizing real-world harms (e.g., healthcare access) over theoretical precision.

**Nunez’s Reforms and Kinsella’s View:**
– Nunez’s patent reform proposals (shorter terms, royalty-based model, tangible invention limits) in “Ending the Patent Monarchy” address systemic issues, including those caused by practicing entities (e.g., reducing pharmaceutical monopolies’ duration). These align with Kinsella’s interim reforms (e.g., shorter terms in [“How to Improve Patent, Copyright, and Trademark Law”](https://c4sif.org/2011/02/how-to-improve-patent-copyright-and-trademark-law/)), though Kinsella might view them as insufficient without abolition.
– Nunez’s royalty model could mitigate practicing entities’ monopolistic control by allowing competition with payments, echoing Kinsella’s compulsory licensing idea. However, Kinsella might argue it still legitimizes state intervention, conflicting with his view that all patents, especially “good” ones, are unjust.

—

### Conclusion

Nunez demonstrates partial awareness of Kinsella’s argument that patent trolls and “bad patents” are less problematic than “good patents” held by practicing entities. His critique of pharmaceutical monopolies aligns with Kinsella’s focus on practicing entities’ harmful use of valid patents, showing implicit recognition of their greater impact. However, Nunez’s emphasis on troll lawsuits without explicitly downplaying their significance suggests he doesn’t fully adopt Kinsella’s hierarchy of harm. His reforms address issues caused by practicing entities, complementing Kinsella’s interim proposals, but lack direct engagement with the specific troll vs. practicing entity distinction in the referenced article. Overall, Nunez’s arguments reinforce Kinsella’s systemic critique, with minor differences in focus and framing.

PAPER:

Ideas Are Free: A Case Against Intellectual Property

By @witheredsummer

Intellectual property is, perhaps, one of those topics few people ever care to consider. Whenever one goes out into the hellhole that is the modern internet and looks at mainstream political and ideological discussions, the topics that are always brought up are economics, state intervention (or lack thereof), sociocultural policies, or private property, but it is very rare for anybody to ever bring up patents, copyright, trademarks and the like. Many will say to themselves: “well, it’s not like it’s too important to discuss”, while others will outright refuse any discussion on the topic, believing that intellectual property is something as sacred as the Quran is for Muslims, the Bible for Christians, or Das Kapital for Marxists.

This essay you will now read (I certainly hope) might be by many considered the delusional ranting of a madman, the dangerous thinking of a “revolutionary murderous communist”, or the naive armchair opinion of “lolbertarian corporate bootlicker”. Therefore, many will choose to not even read it, believing that there is no value in debating such an idea that’s either “unimportant”, or “fundamentally correct”, but those two are the notions I will proceed to tear apart in the following sections: the misconception that intellectual property law is not as important as other topics, and the doctrine that it is a necessity for any functioning society.

Before I begin, though, I feel the need to make a disclaimer: I am not a legal expert, I am not a lawyer, a historian, a political scientist, a sociologist, nor do I have any more authority on this topic than you, my dear reader. I am merely someone with a strong conviction who has taken some time to do some reading, and some time to do some thinking. You should know this, because this means that my opinion is not beyond reproach, but it also shows that it is not necessary to have a PhD in intellectual property law in order to form an informed opinion on the topic and feel capable of debating it with anybody else.

A Short Introduction

Normally, what most people would do at the beginning of such an essay would be to introduce people to the concepts about to be discussed. I’d much rather skip this and get straight to the ranting, but I’ll instead cite this definition:

Intellectual property rights are rights over ideal objects, which are recognized by the material medium on which they are embodied.¹

This one definition comes from a digital Spanish-translated copy of Stephan Kinsella’s Against Intellectual Property, which itself is quoted from Tom G. Palmer’s Are Patents and Copyrights Morally Justified? The Philosophy of Property Rights and Ideal Objects². These are two short works I heavily recommend reading if you’d like to get a much more nuanced understanding of not only what intellectual property (from now on called IP, for simplicity) is, but also of the libertarian philosophical arguments against it. Just don’t mix up Stephan Kinsella with the Irish economist Stephen Kinsella, those are two completely different people with different ideologies.

Now, I also believe explaining the (somewhat abridged) history of intellectual property laws is crucial for context, as it will help readers grasp the core arguments of this essay.

The (Mildly Abridged) History of Intellectual Property

While in modern times (disclaimer: as of May 16, 2025. If you’re reading this a century from now it might be different, please consult your nearest cybernetic overlord for updated information) we normally think of IP as springing up during the early industrial era, the truth is that this concept dates all the way back to the times of Ancient Greece and the Roman Republic. During classical antiquity and up to the early modern period, many systems existed which granted a limited amount of ownership over ideas to those who (claimed to have) invented them; in Sybaris, an Ancient Greek city, a law was passed around the 3rd century BCE, whereby whenever a “cook” invented a “new exquisite dish”, they were the only ones allowed to make it for a duration of a year; in other words, the person who came up with the new dish was given a year-long monopoly over it. This claim comes from contemporary historian Phylarchus, and was later cited by Athenaeus in Deipnosophistae³. The veracity of the claim, however, is dubious, since the only testimony comes from a secondary source and no legal records exist of such law, but this anecdote simply echoes the various forms of IP rights that might have existed, and likely did exist, during this historical period.

Five hundred kilometers northwest of Sybaris, we could find Rome during the times of the Empire, where Roman law also included notions of IP protection, which were, however, much more liberal. There was no equivalent to modern copyright, so while books were written, sold and bought, there was no ownership over their content, only over the physical items which hosted the writing (as in, the books themselves)⁴. However, Roman society did recognize moral ownership, which meant that respected authors had their works acknowledged and defended as theirs by their peers, and plagiarism was socially condemned, albeit not punished by law, unlike trade secrets, which were legally binding through contracts, somewhat similar to the modern day, but with less state intervention in the matter.

The first formal patent law was, arguably, conceived in the year of our lord 1474 in Venetia, Italy, through the Venetian Patent Statute⁵. This statute granted exclusive rights to inventors for their innovations for a period of 10 years⁶, and the principles in this document remain as the core principles behind modern IP law. 150 years later, in 1624, England’s Statute of Monopolies was created, which limited the Crown’s power to grant monopolies and promote patents for “new manufacturers”⁷. The Copyright Act of 1710 in the United Kingdom was the first document for copyright law, granting authors control over their work for a period of 14 years and recognizing creative works as property⁸ (trust me, this is where it starts to go downhill). The US Constitution signed in 1789, in its Article 1, Section 8, gave Congress the power to grant patents and copyright⁹, and the first patent law in the US was created through the Patent Act of 1790¹⁰.

Once the 19th century arrived, all hope was abandoned. The Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property of 1883 established the first international IP treaty and introduced the principle of national treatment¹¹ (equal rights for both foreign and local inventors). The Berne Convention in 1886 standardized copyright law internationally¹² (only in its signatory nations). Naturally, after the first half of the 20th century globalization began to take place, which prompted the all-powerful, all-benevolent United Nations to create the World Intellectual Property Organization in 1967 to promote and harmonize IP laws worldwide (and ruin everyone’s fun). The TRIPS Agreement of 1994 forced the members of the World Trade Organization to adopt minimum IP protection across all forms of intellectual property, globally enforcing IP¹³. The final nail in the coffin came with the US’ Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which, unlike the 1978 hit “Y.M.C.A.” by Village People, is not good, and clearly replaces a Y with a D. The DMCA introduced intellectual property into the digital world¹⁴, effectively turning the act of copying 1s and 0s in a particular order into a crime; but you wouldn’t steal a car, right?

Before moving onto the next section, as a final note for the (not that abridged) history of IP, movements like the GNU¹⁵ in the 1980s, and Creative Commons¹⁶ in 2001 represented a countertrend by providing creators the capacity to share their work through more permissive licenses, while not entirely waiving their rights. These licenses are just two of many others which fall into the category of Copyleft, to which an entire religion should be built around due to their martyrdom.

Why Not IP

Quite frankly, there are not a few, not dozens, not hundreds, but perhaps thousands of arguments to be made against the concept of intellectual property rights. These might be based on natural law, utilitarianism, materialism, or even theology, if you will. Compiling an entire list of arguments against (and, perhaps, in favor) of IP is a job I’ll leave to someone who is way angrier than me (and has more free time as well). Instead, I will explore several points which will provide you—my most beloved reader, who likely stumbled upon this essay by sheer chance—with an understanding at both a philosophical and a practical level of why intellectual property rights are both immoral and detrimental to society, and why they should ultimately be vanquished (some day, fingers crossed).

Property As a Tangible Asset

The most common definition of property in law is, simplifying:

The right to the possession, use, or disposal of something; ownership.¹⁷

This definition for property implies that something can be owned, used, and disposed of at one’s will. However, we have an issue when we try to translate this concept into the world of ideas: ideas are not a tangible thing, nor are they truly finite. Traditional property rights came into existence to manage rivalrous goods, items whose consumption by any one party prevents simultaneous consumption by another (e.g. if you eat a banana, I can’t eat that banana). Physical assets are inherently rivalrous due to their natural scarcity, so the existence of frameworks to allocate these assets is completely logical and necessary, as they resolve any potential conflict of interest between two or more entities over any given item.

On the other hand, ideas are fundamentally non-rivalrous, as they can be infinitely replicated; my knowing or using of an idea does not prevent anyone else from knowing or using the exact same idea simultaneously. Applying frameworks designed for rivalrous goods over non-rivalrous, abstract concepts, only produces artificial scarcity where none would naturally exist. Now, IP does not directly map to traditional property rights, instead it tries to incentivize creation by borrowing property concepts, as it follows the belief that if you give a monopoly over a creation to its inventor, they’ll be incentivized to innovate and create new things regularly in order to profit off their efforts. Nevertheless, this grafting of property concepts onto the realm of ideas remains problematic, precisely because ideas lack the inherent rivalry and scarcity that forms the basis of traditional property justification.

The concept of IP law also criminalizes parallel thought. It can inadvertently stifle independent creation and future innovation. Because ideas can be developed in parallel, and expression often follows logical or common pathways, IP regimes can and will penalize those who arrive at similar expressions, inventions or conclusions independently. This creates barriers to entry, favors incumbents, and discourages legitimate creative or scientific exploration for fear of infringing on broadly defined would-be rights. If you’ve ever had any idea for a story, a movie script, an invention, or any other thing that you could claim intellectual rights over, the chances that at least one of the billions of humans who have existed, currently exist, and will exist, has had or will have the same idea as you do, are likely closer to 100% than to 0%. Thoughts flow like the currents of a river, constantly, and each drop of water flows in the same direction, independently, yet alongside the rest, so it is inevitable that any idea will have, at the very least, one highly similar counterpart by another thinker, if not a carbon copy of it, but these independent creations often go unrecognized or unrealized, as the odds of such thinkers connecting to discover their shared genesis are incredibly slim. For more pseudo-profound nature analogies, refer to the Tao Te Ching and Zhuangzi.

All of this is merely an overview of the inherently flawed problem with IP law when analyzed through the lens of natural law. I insist that, if you want a much more detailed explanation of this, you read the aforementioned book by Stephan Kinsella, in which he explains many of these concepts in-depth in a way so beautiful it might make you cry, and then promptly become a political extremist.

Monopolies

During the (somewhat abridged) explanation of IP law’s history, you might have noticed that the word “monopoly” came up a number of times. Be not confused: monopolies are not a side effect of IP law, but the point of it. As mentioned earlier, the justification behind IP law is, generally, providing incentives to creation and innovation by granting creators a monopoly over their own invention, or in other words, giving them exclusivity to sell their invention or work, and granting them the legal capacity to punish those who infringe on their rights over said creation. While this may sound sensible on paper, it becomes closer to hellish when put into practice.

The monopolies which arise from, in particular, patent law, are, effectively, state-granted monopolies. Now, let’s be fair: there’s not much of a practical issue if I create a machine which cuts oranges in 3 pieces, patent it, and get a legal monopoly over it, because such an invention is hardly practical or useful, and arguably, a majority of inventions that get patented are similarly fringe in utility and scope, so there’s little space for serious competition there due to the niche market they may be aimed towards. However, these monopolies do become a rather big issue when these patents are granted over goods which become widely popular, useful or necessary, and there are some real-world examples of this:

The United States’ patent system interacts with its pharmaceutical industry in a truly egregious manner, and this becomes particularly evident in the case of insulin. To be fair, there are many factors at play in the broader context of the US’ pharmaceutical industry, but patents undeniably play a central role. The original insulin patent was filed in 1923 and was sold for just $1 (yes, $1 dollar, or $18.70 as of the time of writing this), as its inventors believed it should remain widely accessible. However, modern insulin is no longer the same product. Since the 1980s, companies have developed synthetic “human” insulin and insulin analogs, which are slightly modified versions designed to alter absorption or efficacy. Each of these modifications, even if almost negligible, be it a formula adjustment, a new delivery mechanism, or a packaging innovation, has been grounds for filing new patents. This tactic is known as evergreening, and it leads to the creation of patent thickets: dense webs of overlapping intellectual property claims that make it nearly impossible for generics or biosimilars to enter the market.

As a result, major pharmaceutical firms get to keep long-term monopolies over various insulin formulas. These monopolies are then aggressively defended, often through litigation, against any organization attempting to introduce affordable generics, and because insulin is a life-sustaining drug with highly inelastic demand, companies can set exorbitant prices with little fear of losing market share. In most cases, these inflated costs are absorbed not directly by patients but by insurance providers or the state, allowing the price bubble to persist. This creates a perverse market dynamic whereby the demand doesn’t decline in the face of higher prices, and the intermediaries shielding patients from direct costs further dull the pressure to reduce prices, thus sustaining a constant loop of, in simple terms, regulated market exploitation.

There are many other such examples within the pharmaceutical industry only. To name a few:

• EpiPen, a drug to treat serious allergic reactions, albeit cheap and generic, was historically highly priced (up to $600) in the United States, even when its cost of production was around $10¹⁸, because only one company owned the patent to the auto-injector delivery system it uses. Its price was ultimately capped in 2025.
• Truvada is one of many HIV antiretrovirals, and it was developed, ironically, using taxpayer-funded research, yet it was priced at over $2000 in the US¹⁹ until generics entered the market, and its price dropped to about $18²⁰.
• Humira, used for various autoimmune conditions, had over 200 patents filed just to delay competition and had the entry of any biosimilars to the US delayed until 2023, before which its patent owners made 20 billion USD a year in profits, making it likely the most lucrative pharmaceutical monopoly in history²¹.
• Cochlear Implants, which are life-changing implants for people with severe hearing loss, have multiple very strong patents assigned to Cochlear Limited on both their hardware and software²², so these devices can cost tens of thousands of dollars and only a few competitors exist in the market.

Beyond that, there are dozens of other products worth mentioning across all sectors of the economy. For instance, patent laws on genetically-modified seeds (largely owned by companies like Monsanto and Bayer) ban farmers from reusing seeds from patented crops and legal actions can be taken on farmers who do (see Bowman v. Monsanto Co.²³), even if it was by accidental contamination. Many Lithium-Ion Batteries are unique and patented, with proprietary designs not shared between different manufacturers, which has negative effects when replacements of batteries for existing products are necessary.

I could certainly spend about 160 pages of this essay mentioning IP monopolies and how each one of them has negative consequences on consumers, but I imagine that, by now, you get the idea. These monopolies do not only hurt people who want to buy a new house appliance or a snack and have few alternatives to choose from, but they literally create artificial bubbles which delay the progress of crucial fields of medicine and research by prohibiting competition, and through this, massively hurt the people whose lives depend on many of these life-changing technologies, who end up unable to access them due to artificially-inflated prices.

To put this into numbers, it is estimated that an average of 10,193 people died from COVID-19 each day that the British government had blocked attempts to waive intellectual property for coronavirus vaccines and treatments²⁴. In the early 2000s, the cost of antiretroviral therapy for HIV/AIDS was between $10000 and $12000 per year²⁵, which made treatment for patients in low-income countries almost completely impossible, which most certainly led to the deaths of thousands of people from a disease which had become easily treatable. Similarly, about 80% of deaths due to diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular conditions happen in middle and low-income countries²⁶, with many of these deaths, though preventable with access to innovative treatments and drugs, occur because international IP law limits such access, and this pattern also extends to malaria, tuberculosis and other ailments²⁷ where access to cures or effective treatments is hampered, in part, by restrictive patent laws. In simpler terms, patent laws cost lives²⁸.

Not-So-Free Sharing of Information

Another issue of great weight comes in the form of copyright. If patents limit people’s access to physical items, copyright limits people’s access to ideas and knowledge. In the modern day, the vast majority of academic research, scientific books, non-fiction works, statistics, educational books and most other forms of concrete data capable of providing progress are locked behind copyright law. This means that vital information that can lead to the faster development of new technologies and which may allow people to further their skill sets and technical expertise, thus allowing further personal, and by extension, societal growth, is protected by, in simple terms, paywalls.

Now, there’s more of a point to be made with copyright than patent law: creative and research works require much more personal thought and unique creativity than the creation of copious physical items which may (or may not) serve a practical purpose. There is a lot of mental effort and time which goes into writing a novel, researching data for an academic paper, or creating an entire movie or videogame, and one of the main incentives to do this might just possibly be the prospect of profiting off these works. Nevertheless, there reaches a point in which one has to put into doubt whether forcing everyone to pay a fee just to be able to read a particular text, without allowing them to even replicate it, is not outright harmful to society at large.

What copyright does is, practically, limiting the free flow of knowledge and information. This outright limits education and progress in all fields: medical, economic, technological, artistic, academic, agricultural, cultural and pretty much any other field that ends in “ic” or “al”. Data which might be useful for better economic calculations or business management might require huge fees to be accessed, or crucial findings in medical fields like neuroscience might be only available in a paper that costs hundreds of dollars to just read and download as a PDF. While it can be argued that most of those with the capacity to put that knowledge into use tend to own or belong to organizations with considerable capital, there’s still a considerable portion of the population, be it individuals, for-profit or non-profit organizations, which could use that data to further develop concrete goods which could, in some cases, lead to the improvement of many lives. What this inevitably does is turn knowledge into a commodity instead of an accessible, shareable public good.

Inevitably, I must once again make a pledge for the poor and remind the reader that, at the end of the day, copyright, just as patents, hurts those with the least resources the most: as someone who grew up in a lower-income household, I went to a lower-income school, in a lower-income city, in a middle-to-lower-income country. In school, we used various books, most of which we had to photocopy, since purchasing them was beyond the budget of most of the students in the school, myself included. This, in practice, meant that in order to get education, both us, the students, and our teachers had to resort to criminal behavior; according to both national and international law, photocopying the books we used was a violation of copyright law, and was therefore punishable. Of course, nobody was going to enforce it, but as we move towards a much more technology-reliant future, new protections against copying and sharing copyrighted works are introduced, and we might not be far from a future in which technology prevents someone from making a photocopy of a copyright-protected work. My situation is not unique, but widespread in most of the developing and underdeveloped world, and the education of billions requires breaking the law; once we get to a point in which this becomes punishable, or impossible thanks to technological advancements on IP enforcement, we’ll be facing a world where education becomes, once again, inaccessible for those who cannot pay for it.

That obviously doesn’t just happen with education, but with all other areas of progress for the people of non-developed nations. Just like copyright applies to written works and prevents university students from accessing academic research or relevant books (such as in my case with most computer science and programming books I used during my higher education), or various companies from accessing market data or useful technologies, copyright also protects software, which, in the modern day, has become a vital part of both economic output and people’s daily lives. This results in many companies in underdeveloped nations, particularly smaller ones, having to use pirated operative systems and pirated software in order to carry out their economic activities, and while free alternatives exist for most popular software, the truth is that many have tools that are not available elsewhere (sometimes also due to, you guessed it, patenting). It is not hyperbolic to claim that if you go anywhere outside of OECD nations, you’ll find that a majority of local companies are running pirated versions of Microsoft Office, Windows 10/11, Adobe Photoshop, or any other software commonly used²⁹. This, again, creates a liability for all of these companies, who can be sued by the proprietary owners of the software they are pirating, and as new DRM technologies are developed, it becomes increasingly harder to pirate these necessary programs, which in many cases are simply unaffordable since few companies offer regionalized pricing for their digital products, which is then worsened even more by the fact that many software characteristics, even the DRM technology itself, end up protected by patent law, so, for instance, small software development companies from poorer nations might not even be able to afford the methods that will prevent their own software from being pirated by, ironically, people in high-income nations who can actually afford them.³⁰

Erasure of History Through Copyright

I could talk a lot more now of how copyright on software also hurts education, or about how that same copyright limits people’s access to entertainment and creative works, but you can already get an impression of this without having to be told about it, so what I’d like to focus on now is somewhat more niche in scope, but extremely important nevertheless, and it is about how copyright creates artificial scarcity and can, adversely, erase entire works from existence.

You have probably heard of lost media; books, videos, videogames, movies, songs and other works that are no longer accessible because they’re lost to time and hard drive failures (requiescat in pace, MySpace). While most of these are lost due to copies not being saved, or the few that did exist being destroyed, we are currently looking down the barrel of a world where, even if you can store anything in thousands of computers at once, media will begin to be erased from history, as if it never existed, because of copyright preventing people from archiving it or sharing it. In recent years, the Internet Archive, the largest digital archive for all types of media throughout history, has been the target of multiple lawsuits which aim to prevent the organization from storing books³¹ and music³² on their servers, effectively forcing them to possibly have to erase these files, many of which are digitalizations of highly rare books, records which can no longer be found anywhere, and many other types of media protected by some sort of IP. These lawsuits might just be the beginning of a long list of future legal issues, since the Internet Archive stores millions of works protected by copyright, and at any given time their owners may come knocking. In the worst-case scenario, the archive could be forced to shut down, not only erasing millions of works (with tens of thousands of them nowhere else to be found), but also erasing over 25 years of the internet’s own history. The loss of knowledge from such an event would be the equivalent to the Library of Alexandria burning 2 million times over. Copyright seeks to protect the works it reigns over, yet, it’s capable of erasing them from existence entirely just to ensure that it doesn’t get undermined out of fear of a slippery slope.

Another issue related to copyright is that it renders a lot of media simply inaccessible, even if they’re not necessarily “lost”. For instance, let’s use a recent example: The Crew was an online, open-world racing videogame released in 2014 by Ubisoft. In December 2023, the game’s servers were shut down, and the game not only delisted from digital stores, but erased from people’s accounts; those who had bought it no longer had access to it, with the justification used by Ubisoft being that “they paid for a license to play the game, not for ownership”. This led to widespread criticism³³, a lawsuit³⁴, and made a dedicated community of its players start working on a fix to allow players to play the game again, but only through piracy, since it is no longer legally accessible. This is not the first time this happens to a videogame; the same happened years earlier with Battlefield 2, Battleborn, Darkspore and hundreds of other games³⁵ which have been rendered completely inaccessible even for those who paid for them. Similar things have happened with movies (such as The Flamingo Kid), music albums, books and other media, all of which simply couldn’t be saved because of copyright-related lawsuits.

There are, also, thousands of works out there for which few remaining copies exist, so the few people who do own those copies and are willing to sell them generally put high prices, and creating copies of that media is, you’re right, illegal, because they are still protected by copyright, in some cases even after their original owners have passed. For instance, while not at all scarce, the music of The Beatles, although over 60 years old now, is still protected by some of the most aggressive copyright and phonographic rights we have ever seen, even though half of the band’s members are now writing songs beyond the wall of eternal slumber, as well as many of those who were involved in the recording and production of those albums. Copyright ends up forcing people who want to experience certain works to have to do it unlawfully, because there simply exist no legal means to do so, even if there, theoretically, should be.

Artistic Erasure and Replacement

Not only does copyright erase history, but it also is capable of replacing or erasing culture and art. These days, few companies own entire catalogs of movies, music and books, and willingly decide to vault them or limit access to them. The reasons are many, but in general, they’re related to keeping the company’s name and catalog relevant and associated with a certain type of media or crowd. This effectively works to homogenize culture.

For instance, much of the pop music you may listen to on most radio stations, whether you’re American, German, Brazilian or Papuan, is from America or the Anglo-speaking world, and this is mostly because said music is backed by large copyright-holding companies, which have the necessary capital and influence to push this music into the mainstream through advertisement in streaming platforms, TV, social media and through massive tours for their artists. This causes local music in non-English languages, and especially unique local genres, to slowly get erased, since the general crowd begins moving towards music in English that is radio-friendly; this is a huge reason why, in the modern day, even most internationally-renowned artists from non-English-speaking nations sing in English. It’s because English music sells because labels monopolize it and push back other music. The copyright structures that these companies use clearly give an incentive to singing in English, which in turn makes younger generations grow up experiencing a completely different type of culture which replaces their own. What many of these labels also tend to do is vault the works that can intervene in the process of promoting their most accessible music, and through the purchase of smaller copyright-holding companies which own the rights over various songs by artists of different nations, they can effectively take them out of the public light and punish anyone who tries to bring them out again.

Disney and Hollywood are two of the main culprits behind worldwide cultural homogenization. Disney has popularized and copyrighted traditional folk stories and fairy tales, like Snow White, Cinderella or The Little Mermaid, altering them and using their copyright monopoly to pass them as the “authentic” or “definitive” versions. This also works as a form of promoting cultural or historical erasure, as they did, for instance, with the 2025 Snow White movie³⁶, where Snow White was played by, ironically, an olive-skinned actress, and in which the movie erased much of its original lore (for instance, the Prince is no longer an actual prince, but a Robin Hood-style bandit). This is an attempt to supersede the original story, sanitizing it for modern audiences while leaving behind its original intentions and messages. Such traditional stories are often in the public domain, but once modified and shielded by armor-clad copyright by big players, the original tales are often suppressed and erased from collective memory. Only a handful of examples avoid this fate, one of them being Anne of the Green Gables, which although in the public domain, is indefinitely trademarked, and the descendants of the original author only allow faithful recreations of the story in other forms of media.

As was mentioned at the beginning of the previous paragraph, Hollywood films are also plagued by similar problems to those in Disney movies: they often readapt stories from other media or earlier productions, heavily modifying them, to then export them abroad, where they’ll be consumed far more than local entertainment since, once again, there’s much more profit to be made through Hollywood’s complex and huge copyright structure, making local adaptations of these works practically impossible due to extreme licensing costs, which has practically crippled the film industries of most other nations, pushing them into a niche while audiences flock to American productions instead.

This all also adversely affects remix cultures and fan works (such as Japanese dōjin culture). Making remixes of existing music has become increasingly harder, as DMCA strikes tend to target any copyrighted music uploaded to mainstream platforms (even in some cases where a recording is quoted for just a few seconds, or even when it’s played by its own author³⁷). Similarly, transformative works, or those which use characters or concepts belonging to copyrighted franchises (like Harry Potter or Star Wars) tend to be targeted if any profit is made out of them (directly or indirectly). This can happen even with fan-made artworks or memes.

Perhaps most importantly, when copyright over works is held not by their authors, but holding companies, this creates the potential for widespread censorship. Let’s imagine a scenario in which, for instance, the music label Epic Records has rights over the entire discography of a certain artist, but this artist then says something highly controversial in public. While (currently) far-fetched, now the company has the possibility to censor the entire catalog of said musician³⁸. If we currently look at the increasingly strict regulations on speech across the world, in particular in the European Union and the United Kingdom, we might not be very far from having governments pressure copyright holders into censoring political opponents, in what would be the equivalent to modern book-burning.

Patent Trolls, Biopiracy and First Come, First Served

Imagine you implement some niche technology to an invention of yours, simply because it makes said invention look better, or gives it a small quality-of-life improvement, then you decide to market it, and before you can say “Man, I hate patent laws”, you’re facing a multi-million-dollar lawsuit because that tiny tweak you made was already patented about a decade ago by some small company dedicated to making the lives of people like you impossible. You just fell victim to a patent troll: Patent trolls are basically people who create patents for items or particular ideas, with the hope of being able to sell them for profit, or to sue anyone who use them. In some cases, the ideas being patented are obvious, which makes this even more ridiculous. Many examples of this exist throughout history, so to give some examples:

• NTP, Inc. is a holding company which, in 2001, sued Research in Motion (the creators of BlackBerry devices) for infringing on its patent related to wireless email technology³⁹. In 2006, RIM had to settle for $612.5 million to avoid BlackBerry services from being shut in the United States⁴⁰.
• Eolas Technologies sued Microsoft in 1999, claiming that Microsoft’s use of plugins in their Internet Explorer browser infringed on Eolas’ patent for embedding interactive elements in a web page. Microsoft almost had to pay $520 million in damages⁴¹ before the case was overturned on appeal, but the legal fees were nevertheless lost.
• Lodsys sued many small app developers in 2011 for allegedly infringing on its patents by using in-app purchasing mechanisms⁴². Lodsys did not create any apps or technology but sought licensing fees from developers. Many developers were forced to settle or pay licensing fees because they couldn’t afford the legal costs of fighting the lawsuit, even though some argued that their use of the technology was covered under other licenses.
• Apple sued Samsung in 2011 over infringements of various design and utility patents, including those covering rounded corners on devices and the “slide to unlock” feature⁴³. Apple was originally to be awarded over $1 billion dollars in legal damages by the lawsuit⁴⁴, but the legal battle was eventually settled for around $500 million⁴⁵.
• Intellectual Ventures is a known patent troll holding company which has sued many others, such as Google, Microsoft and Apple, over infringements on many simple or obvious features included in their products⁴⁶. Most of those lawsuits were settled outside of court.

These are just some cases, but hundreds exist throughout history. This comes to show that patents can and tend to work as liabilities for companies, big and small, since others can simply force them to pay for using certain features or ideas in their products, even though they might be ridiculously common or intuitive.

Another issue with IP law is that, in many cases, it works as a first come, first served system, commonly seen through biopiracy. What this means is that whoever registers a certain patent or work first owns the monopoly on it, even if they were not its creator. While there exists protocols and laws that try to avoid this from happening, it has nevertheless happened many times, and these protections usually don’t apply over communal ownership very well. This leads to certain techniques, inventions and even creative works being taken ownership of by people who had no interference in their discovery or creation. Since I really like bulleted lists, examples include:

• In the 1990s, the US Department of Agriculture and W.R. Grace & Co. patented a method of extracting neem oil from the Neem tree⁴⁷. The Neem tree is native to India and has been used for millennia for traditional medicine and agriculture. Since this was widespread generational knowledge, no protection existed for it, and the Indian government had to wage a lengthy battle for the patent to be revoked in 2000, at least in the European Union⁴⁸.
• In 1997, the American company RiceTec was granted a patent on “basmati rice lines and grains”⁴⁹. Basmati rice is a traditional agricultural product native to India and Pakistan. The patent claimed innovations that were already part of the traditional practices of rice cultivation in those regions, and it was eventually mostly revoked as it was considered a form of biopiracy⁵⁰.
• Another case pertaining to India is the Turmeric patent which was granted in 1995 to American researchers on the use of turmeric for healing wounds⁵¹, which, yes, was already known in India for centuries. Yes, the patent was revoked in 1997 too⁵².
• Ayahuasca is a traditional spiritual medicine used by indigenous groups in the Amazon basin. In 1986, an American named Loren Miller was granted a patent on a specific variety of the plant⁵³, and of course, the patent was protested by Indigenous organizations of the Amazon, ultimately considered biopiracy, and revoked in 1999⁵⁴.

Yet another pressing matter with this is the fact that legal battles over patents and copyright are expensive. Expensive generally means that those who have fewer resources have fewer chances of winning any legal battle, which is exactly the case with the next examples (I love bulleted lists!):

• Robert Kearns was an American inventor who invented and patented the Intermittent Windshield Wiper. Despite the patent, companies such as Ford and Chrysler began using the technology without his permission. Kearns did win the lawsuits he filed against these companies, but it came as more of a pyrrhic victory for him, since it took years and large sums of money to cover legal fees⁵⁵.
• The Wright Brothers, credited for inventing the first flying airplane, had also patented the design of the aircraft and its innovations. Glenn Curtiss, another pioneer, began using similar technology in his own aircraft, which led to extensive legal battles with the Wright Brothers, who were much less financially capable of seeing them through⁵⁶.
• The Happy Birthday song was originally written by the Hill sisters in the late 19th century. However, Warner/Chappell Music claimed ownership of it and collected royalties for its use. This copyright was only revoked in 2015 after a lawsuit was filed in 2013⁵⁷, even though the song should have been public domain. For decades, small companies, filmmakers in particular, were forced to pay royalties for featuring the song.
• Edwin Howard Armstrong is credited with inventing FM radio technology in the 1930s. The well-established AM industry opposed his creation, and RCA copied and used it without proper licensing, which led Armstrong into an extensive and expensive legal battle with not only RCA, but many other companies which used his patent without permission⁵⁸. These prolonged battles took a severe toll on his finances and mental health, leading to a breakdown and paranoia. The immense strain also deeply affected his family, leading his wife to be committed to a mental hospital after she reportedly jumped into the East River, and tragically, leading to Armstrong taking his own life at age 64⁵⁹.

The PPP Doctrine: Patent, Protect, Perpetuate

A final issue that I would like to bring up, out of so many I could continue to mention, is how IP laws create their very own need to exist, as a self-reinforcing legal construct. The very existence of laws that protect intellectual property creates incentives which justify its own continuation. It’s the prisoner’s dilemma applied to intellectual property law⁶⁰; if nobody patented their creations, then ideas could freely flow and build upon each other, like it happens in the real world without need for IP, but because IP exists, anyone can patent something and restrict its use, which then forces creators to patent their ideas defensively: not because they want to restrict others, but because they don’t want see themselves restricted from using and marketing their own idea. It’s a legal arms race.

Some will argue that there’s an inherently important aspect to IP, and it is that it incentivizes innovation, therefore, IP exists justifiably as a mechanism of incentives to prevent technological stagnation. Ironically, this is exactly what IP promotes: conformity in exchange for profits. Once you own a monopoly over a product, it’ll take someone else to create a similar product that’s better and/or cheaper, and which does not violate your patent for you to actually have an incentive to improve upon your invention or invent something new. IP only manages to create cycles of progress followed by a long stagnation.

What is perhaps most absurd when it comes to the justification of IP as necessary for progress is the claim that its existence is what drives innovation. Now, I don’t wish to insult the intelligence of any one of my cherished readers, but I must admit that certain followers of a female Russian-American author I will not name are, just perhaps, unaware of human history prior to the Industrial Revolution. Many like to claim that IP law has direct causality with the accelerated technological progress humanity began experiencing during the late 18th century, but this is a clear case of correlation; the popularization of IP law merely happened to coincide with the Industrial Revolution, which brought with it massive technological and scientific advancement which created incremental loops of further development. Even some of the most revolutionary inventions of the time, such as the early versions of the steam engine, were not truly patented⁶¹. This argument falls apart even further when we consider that even when some previous IP laws existed (such as the Venetian Statute), they didn’t particularly have any noticeable effect in innovation, otherwise, Venetia would have become the greatest technological hub of the early modern period, which it was far from, as, in fact, the city came to be in decay by the 17th century.

The argument in favor of IP as a must for innovation is fundamentally flawed, not only through practical examples, but through sheer praxeology; if people decided to innovate seeking to monopolize their inventions, then, logically, you wouldn’t be reading this, in fact, you’d probably be eating poisonous mushrooms or banging rocks inside a cave, since no human would have even cared to move past paleolithic technology, as no incentive would have existed to create new advancements which everyone else could copy. Unlike what defenders of IP like to believe, it is evident that IP laws exist because of emerging innovation cultures throughout history, rather than the other way around, and that IP is better understood as a political and economic tool to consolidate or protect gains, rather than a system of incentives for entrepreneurship and creativity.

IP in the AI Era, or the Revelation of a Contradiction

Originally, I hadn’t thought about artificial intelligence (AI) and its relation to intellectual property while I was writing this essay; it came to me while I was trying to fall asleep a few days later, and ever since, I’ve been thinking and analyzing this relationship, which only led me to develop an even greater hatred for intellectual property laws, which is only rivaled by Ted Kaczynski’s hatred of modernity (minus the mailing people explosives part and probably soon to include the going-into-complete-reclusion part). The section you’re about to read is considerably extensive relative to the previous ones, and I deem it to be a sub-essay of this entire manifesto.

AI is not a new concept; humans have fantasized with machines having human-like intelligence for centuries, and the first incursions into the field of artificial intelligence began taking place way back in the 1950s, by the likes of Alan Turing and John McCarthy. However, it took decades and many “AI winters” for us to reach the modern day, where a computer can use complex probabilistic algorithms to recognize speech, generate expressive human-like voices, generate realistic videos and images, or write entire essays on any given topic (worry not, fellow humans, I can assure you this essay was written by another Homo sapiens). This huge development in AI is the result of investment and further technological advancement in the fields of neural networks, deep learning and computational complexity, and is soon to begin being hindered by… do I have to mention it?… IP, it’s IP.

For an AI to be able to recognize a face or a word, or to be able to generate any type of content, it has to be trained on preexisting data. Different models are trained with different data based on their scope, be that human faces, texts, speech, or a combination of these and other things. While there are hundreds of different implementations of AI which aid people, including us, on a daily basis, perhaps the most amazing, most useful, and most mainstream ones are generative AI models like GPT, Gemini or Stable Diffusion; we use these to ask questions, make images, learn about new things, get help with work or our studies, or just to have some fun. These models are capable of such massive and varied output thanks to them being trained on a massive amount of data from thousands of sources, upon which are inevitably included copyrighted works.

As of the time of writing this, the world of AI is pretty much the 21st century Wild West: mostly lawless, primarily regulated through common interest and professional standards, and sitting there in its relative freedom waiting for regulators to get their hands on it. Because of this, we’ve seen some extremely massive leaps in the quality and capacity of AI models just every a few months: we went from having videos of a deformed Will Smith eating what seem like noodles to videos that are almost indistinguishable from reality, as we went from chatbots which struggled to do anything more than basic reasoning to building entire small videogames using a few prompts. I believe this to be greatly thanks to the fact that the different companies investing in the field have been left to their own devices, not having anyone putting a gun on the table and forcing them to do or not do something. If we look back in time, we can see how other fields, such as aviation, genetic engineering, pharmaceuticals, and modern telecommunications (as well as the internet itself) saw a golden age which was eventually halted when oversight by state agents was imposed upon them. While sure, we can point out some reasons for that: early aviation was dangerous, genetic engineering risked having us playing God the wrong way, pharmaceuticals led to such things as the thalidomide disaster, and the early internet was a land of near-null data privacy and unrestricted speech. However, what all these fields share is that after regulations kicked in, they saw themselves crippled, to different extents, and for the most part, the consumer paid the price, but most importantly, it equipped the State itself with the capacity to monopolize advancements in these fields for its own nefarious purposes (firebombing of civilian settlements, drone warfare, the Tuskegee Syphilis studies, weaponization of Anthrax, mass surveillance, and the list goes on and on).

Right now, we are in a rollercoaster climbing up high, waiting for its carts to fall down the tracks into the arms of bureaucracy, and, inevitably, the expansion of IP law to completely encompass the entirety of the AI field and all of its byproducts. As I mentioned earlier, AI models need to be trained on preexisting data, and what better data to train an AI like GPT than thousands of books, videos, music, research papers, images and such? Surely nobody would care to put their o-so-righteous intellectual property rights over the advancement of what is perhaps the most revolutionary invention in human history… right…? Who are we kidding? Of course, they would! We are already seeing the first legal battles fought by IP owners against AI tech companies over infringement of their would-be-rights, either because they used them to train their models and/or their models generated content similar to their intellectual works. For one last bulleted list from yours truly:

• Authors Guild v. OpenAI: Various authors, George R.R. Martin and John Grisham among them, argued that OpenAI used pirated or unlicensed datasets that included their entire works to train their models, and that said models can summarize, emulate or generate content based on their writings⁶².
• Silverman v. OpenAI / Meta: Sarah Silverman, an author, joined others in alleging that OpenAI and Meta used her copyrighted books without permission during AI training, including the claim that the copies used were pulled from shadow libraries like LibGen or Sci-Hub, and that the models by these two companies could generate content very similar to their own works⁶³ ⁶⁴.
• Andersen v. Stability AI / Midjourney / DeviantArt: Three visual artists sued Stability AI (developers of Stable Diffusion), Midjourney and DeviantArt, claiming that their visual styles and copyrighted works were used to train AI art generators without consent, which in turn allowed people to generate art similar to theirs, undermining their work and diluting the market⁶⁵.

In the near future, we should expect to see countless similar lawsuits from authors, artists, musicians, public figures and others, claiming that any given company violated their intellectual property rights. It is very clear that the arrival of the AI era created a huge gray zone for copyright law, and while some might think that this is due to the state not having yet intervened to set the rules of the game, I propose a deeper, more unsettling explanation: AI has exposed the fundamental irrationality of IP law by removing the human element to the act of creating things, and therefore, it has effectively nullified the idea that IP has to exist in order to reward creative thinking and intellectual effort. What we all knew, but refused to acknowledge, was revealed by this new technological revolution: that the process of creation, at its core, is iterative, derivative and procedural, the very same traits that IP law claims to elevate above mere reproduction.

This long-delayed revelation inevitably forces those who believe in the legitimacy of intellectual property to face that AI is not a disruptor of IP, but rather a mirror of its inherent contradictions, and it puts under the light what most of them would rather blissfully ignore: that this system was never designed to protect culture or creativity, but rather to control and enclose it. Now that computers are capable of generating content not unlike a human, the defense of IP becomes more about gatekeeping access to cultural and intellectual capital, in an effort to assert human exclusivity, not on moral grounds, but on economic ones, and in the process, slowing down progress in exchange for prolonged profiteering through State-granted monopolies.

Historically, intellectual property law has relied on the romantic notion of the solitary genius, of the individual who conjures originality ex nihilo, as if by divine inspiration. AI has decisively undermined this fantasy by producing seemingly creative outputs while lacking a human brain, and by extension, the ability to reason, feel or decide. AI is capable of creating not because it is inspired, but because it has access to large amounts of informational input, and the capacity for pattern recognition and recombination, which, if we stop to think about it, isn’t too different to how we ourselves create things. Where does a musician get the inspiration to write music? Normally, from other musicians; someone who has never listened to music can’t be expected to be able to write a song. Where does an artist get the inspiration to make a painting? From the works of art of both nature and men; someone who spent his entire life inside an empty room wouldn’t be capable of painting anything more than abstract nonsense. Where did I get the inspiration to write this essay? From reading various authors and the opinions and arguments of my fellow ideologues as well as those of my opponents; had I never cared to read or debate on the topic of IP, then you wouldn’t be reading this right now. This all brings us back to a core philosophical inconsistency of IP: how can we possibly claim ownership over an idea or creation when we had to draw inspiration from others’ works? Why shouldn’t those people have ownership too over what we make, considering they were instrumental for our own creativity?

At this point, I can imagine my many detractors might not have been convinced by my appeal to rationality, but with any luck, a more practical, consequentialist approach might sway their opinion. Maybe you, the reader, are not only a detractor, but in fact, you are someone wearing a fancy suit, in some fancy office, living off the money of taxpayers like me, thinking of how great it would be to regulate the entirety of the AI field just to spite me for writing this essay, and while this might sound like a paranoid delusion, this imaginary bureaucrat is the example of a person whose job would be to halt human progress. Such a bureaucrat likely exists, and like many others, is currently sitting somewhere, thinking of some sort of new arbitrary project to propose to their legislature so that the development of AI can be regulated and slowed down over ethical concerns such as “what if AI is used to spread misinformation?” or “what if AI is used to promote or teach violence?”. If I had to ask a couple of questions to said politician, they’d probably be “what if slowing down the progress of AI prevents us from fixing climate change or curing cancer?” and “what if AI is used by the government itself to spread misinformation and teach violence?”. Thanks to AI, we are now able to make huge progress in vital fields for human survival and progress: we can find better ways to treat illnesses, find new cures, predict economic trends, find new ways to fight issues like climate change, and countless other things. How could we possibly trust the State to regulate a technology that so far has been extremely beneficial, on ethical grounds, knowing that the State itself is the main perpetrator of unethical behavior in the world? Are we willing to give the bureaucrats the power to turn a revolutionary technology into a tool to wage war against its own population and other states, all through “smart regulations”, like they did with drones, biotechnology, drugs, encryption and currency itself?

Perhaps what is most concerning about the prospect of regulating AI and its associated fields is that there’s no objective line to be drawn. Who determines when AI infringes on copyright law and how? At what point does IP over a creation become void if it was made with AI assistance? Who even is at fault? Imagine you ask a large language model to generate a particular story about a young guy with glasses who goes to a school for magicians, and then find himself trapped in a battle royale deathmatch with other students, and at some point one of the characters also happens to explain to the protagonist the intricacies of wealth and income inequality in the United States and Europe since the 18th century. Then, you share that story publicly. The AI might be infringing on the copyright of multiple different authors by creating that story. You would probably be trespassing on their copyright as well for sharing it or profiting from it. The question, though, is “who’s really at fault here?”. The owner of the model you used? All they did was probably train the AI on large datasets which might or might not have included the works of those authors, legally or illegally, but the AI did not generate that story by itself; it required you to engineer a specific prompt to do it, so blaming the company for allowing a user to use the tool it offers in a way that violates IP wouldn’t be different to Universal suing Gibson because someone recorded and sold an altered cover of Helter Skelter by The Beatles as a derivative work using one of their guitars to record it. Maybe you are at fault, but you did not write a single word of that story, all you did was share it, perhaps even through the AI application’s own system (such as GPT’s sharing feature), but if you get sued, then what about every single person who used AI to aid in their creative writing process? I certainly doubt anyone has the time or money to sue millions of individuals. Don’t forget that in this hypothetical scenario, you shared or profited from the AI-generated story, but the lawsuits I previously mentioned only required the AI model to generate text similar to those copyrighted, without the need for any user to share it. In that case, why don’t authors sue others for mimicking their style or concepts? Why don’t artists file lawsuits against people who replicate their paintings for practice, or musicians drag other musicians who recreate their music as tributes or draw inspiration from them to court over infringement of their intellectual property rights? The reason is simple: we culturally and legally accept that learning, imitating and getting inspired by the works of others are essential parts of the creative process. If it’s okay when we do it, then why is it suddenly theft when a machine does it at scale and without any trace of the human ego?

So, how do we even regulate that? Do we ban companies from training their AI with datasets containing copyrighted works? Make them have to filter through millions of texts, images, videos, internet comments and more just to make sure none of it is copyrighted? That doesn’t at all prevent their AIs from generating a string of alphanumeric characters which might resemble or be the exact same as something that’s been copyrighted, after all, an AI is essentially not different to a bunch of monkeys banging on keyboards in the way it works. So, maybe we allow usage of copyright if the IP holders allow it? Surely it’d be a quick and easy process to ask hundreds of thousands of individuals and organizations permission or licenses to fairly use their works, with said licenses often expiring after a certain amount of time, not to mention it is realistically impossible to regulate the way people will use the AIs trained with that data as to ensure the models will not in any way infringe on the licensing conditions. There is simply no way we can create an objective set of rules determining what data AI can be trained with, and what it can or can’t generate, because AI is practically an amalgamation of the entirety of human creativity; its sheer existence enables it to infringe on copyright law, because if someone prompt-engineers a response sufficiently, the AI will eventually generate something legally questionable, and you cycle back to the previous paragraph, where there’s nobody objectively at fault. Artificial intelligence is, therefore, best left to its own devices, not only so that we may not hinder human advancement, but simply because the mere proposal of its regulation in relation to IP law leads to endless arguments which IP is simply not made to solve, and by extension, to arbitrary decisions which will help nobody and harm everyone.

A Realistic Solution to an Absurd Problem

When one looks into the contradictions and counterproductive effects of IP law, it is impossible not to wonder how it is that this is allowed to happen. It is perhaps a biased view, maybe there’s more to be won from IP law than from getting rid of it (according to a certain tomboyish author). However, the truth is that humanity existed for most of its history without such a system, and yet, we have progressed immensely; even countries where IP legislation has historically, and in modern times, been weak, have been able to see huge technological progress and important innovations, as is the case with China, and to a lesser extent, India and Brazil. That is not to say that a lack of IP law necessarily drove their progress, but it is a clear hint that IP is not the end-all be-all of human creativity and development.

After such a long critique, the only logical thing left for me to do would be to propose a solution, after all, what kind of person would I be if I shoot to wound, but not to kill? If I am to be fair, my philosophy already includes a very simple trick that would solve this entire problem almost instantaneously: just get rid of IP law and let the market sort itself out. While this is what most of my peers would likely propose, without compromise, I must be honest with myself and realistic for those in my audience who have not yet become radicalized enough to think that evil cannot be reformed. I absolutely love the proposal of letting spontaneous action take the lead here, but concrete reality is not as friendly with the idealism engraved in my heart, mind and entrails, and it wouldn’t be so friendly with such an idea which would easily get anyone proposing it labeled as either a “communist” or a “corporate-loving fascist”. To put it differently, for IP to be completely erased, we would need a complete worldwide shift in paradigm, and that’s one shift that will never happen if those of us who oppose it decide to stay put while we wait for Richard Stallman to be crucified and revealed to be the second coming of Christ. There are simply too many factors that come into play when we think of IP, all of which work as constraints, both internal and external, which would make just getting rid of any and all IP legislation a completely impossible thing.

One of such constraints is the treaties mentioned during the (hardly-abridged-at-all) explanation of IP’s history. If any country today were to abolish even just some core IP-related legislation, as the vast majority are bound by the TRIPS agreement and members of the WTO, said nations would be sanctioned into oblivion, suffer massive capital flight (with everything this entails), and become diplomatically isolated. Not even the most radical parties with any form of power, anywhere in the world, have even remotely cared to propose abolishing any kind of IP, and any of those who have (such as the Swedish Pirate Party), naturally never found themselves winning a single seat anywhere within their political structures. The most we’ve seen have been freer approaches to IP, such is the case with India’s patent law, which refuses patents that lead to evergreening⁶⁶, or former Ecuador president Rafael Correa’s small IP reform, which allowed the production of generic variations of patented drugs⁶⁷, but naturally, these fall terribly short of working as any proper reform of the wretched intellectual property system that rules over most of the world.

Given that the idea of simply abolishing IP is very far from reach yet, I decide in its place to propose an updated, heterodox framework, with which to create a compromise between intellectual ownership and freedom of accessing and sharing information. This is in no way a proposal for a permanent solution, but rather, what should be the first step towards a world where just the idea of vanquishing IP stops being taboo. This framework has not actually been influenced by any other authors or thinkers, at least not consciously, but I imagine much of it is far from new, so just consider it a form of parallel thought; the same kind that would probably have me justify myself before a judge for just thinking the same thing someone else did a little too late.

Ending the Patent Monarchy

Currently, most patent laws across the world provide the creators (or whoever was granted the patent) a legal monopoly over the patented invention. These patents have varying lengths, but both in the United States and my native Argentina, this number is 20 years, which aligns with the TRIPS agreement, to which, as said before, most nations are a party through the WTO. Generally, no renewals past this period are allowed, so after 20 years, that patent becomes free to use. However, minor tweaks can practically expand these patent monopolies by 10 additional years (although it depends on national laws), as explained with examples such as that of Insulin previously.

My first point to be made is that 20 years of monopoly is a damn long time. Just think that, 20 years before this was written, I was not yet in kindergarten, and nobody had a computer with 100 times the processing power of a Pentium 4 in their pocket at all times. Such a duration for patents can severely delay any potential innovations, let alone competitors selling the same product, right in the midst of the era of most accelerated technological development we’ve seen. This easily leads to stagnation, artificial scarcity, and it makes patent trolls have even more of an incentive to claim patents. For my personal proposal, I say that the maximum length of any patent should be 5 to 10 years for completely new inventions, and 2 or 3 years for any tweaks or improvements over existing ones. This will shorten the delay of any new competition entering the market, and it will work as an incentive for quicker innovation, reducing stagnation and reducing profitability for patent trolls. Additionally, I propose that patents over digital-only inventions last a maximum of 2 or 3 years, which means that any creation that can only be applied to software, for an example, a new gesture-based authentication system, becomes free to copy after that time, to allow open source or free software to implement them before they become deprecated or obsolete.

I also propose that patents only apply over tangible inventions. In other words, it should not be possible to patent methods or procedures, thus any new technique for extracting cotton, or any specific use of a natural product, should not be possible to protect through IP law. This will aid ending biopiracy such as the cases involving India, mentioned earlier in the text. It also binds into the problem with intellectual property applying over actions, which is rather absurd (then again, read Kinsella, really). However, this should not apply over machines which provide or enable these new methods or procedures, such as the case of a cotton-extraction machine, or a machine which can process a plant for medicinal use, since these are clear examples of tangible inventions.

The third, and perhaps most important, point regarding patents is moving from the current restrictive exclusivity system to a royalty-based model. This means that patents, instead of granting exclusive rights to its creators, grant them exclusive rights over a percentage of the profit generated by the sale of said inventions. Since setting an arbitrary number of this would perhaps not be very sensible, patent-holders should be required to fill in the percentage of income that they require from others for the use of their patent. A maximum percentage could be set, for instance, 50%, or alternatively allow de facto exclusivity by allowing creators to demand 100% of the royalties from the use of their ideas, with said percentage decaying over time until it reaches 0%, at the end of the patent’s life. Under this system, the patent holders would be able to freely profit from their creation, while also being able to profit off others who use it, without fully monopolizing it, but allowing them to keep the majority of the market share by letting them sell their product at a lower market price, given competitors will have to pay royalties to the patent holder. The patent holder would still be able to sue in case the patent is profited from without royalties being paid out, which would simply replace the lawsuits for the invention being used at all. Given that the royalty percentage would decay, eventually the patentor would inevitably have to compete in equal footing with the rest of the people offering their invention.

Protecting Creativity Without Punishing Knowledge

As mentioned before, copyright has a large list of issues, primarily due to the fact that it is in its nature to limit the free flow and access to information. While I would personally prefer for copyright to be entirely destroyed, annihilated, trounced, vanquished, and replaced by copyleft alternatives, this is still as distant for modern legal frameworks to achieve as reaching Alpha Centauri is for space exploration. Therefore, this following section will focus on my proposal to rework modern copyright law, and a Q&A regarding my proposals.

Copyrighted media, such as books, films, videogames or music, should be allowed to be shared freely in private after purchase. If I buy a book, it should be possible for me to share this book privately with other individuals, who would not have a right themselves to share it, effectively limiting sharing to the owners of physical or digital copies of said media. Nevertheless, this new framework would disallow publicly sharing such media on the internet or in public (for as long as the copyright lasts). Profiting from the original work by copying it should remain (mostly) illegal, unless specifically allowed by its author, who could collect royalties or sue over perceived copyright infringement. Selling the physical media or any unique digital license which provides access to the work would, however, remain legal and not bound to any payment of royalties. Any derivatives from a copyrighted work would be allowed, such as translations or fan fictions, but these too would be subject to compensation in case of being sold, although their public, free sharing would be guaranteed. The use of copyrighted works for training AI models and other similar purposes should remain largely allowed, and legal grounds for copyright infringement should only arise in the case that any Large Language Model trained on that data shares large portions of those works, verbatim, on demand (which is highly unlikely to happen, anyway).

How would this be enforced, though?

The sharing of multimedia in private is hardly controllable to begin with, since it’d require state agents to invade the privacy of individuals at almost all times (which I’m sure they’d be happy to do if there weren’t 8 billion of us to police at all times). The idea behind this reform is to not criminalize the cases in which people do share things in private, keeping only public unauthorized sharing of a copyrighted work as a type of infringement on the IP rights of the original creator.

How would the scope of private sharing be limited?

This is a fair concern. Theoretically, one might be able to share a book with hundreds of people if they ask you to share it, and you agree to it, at which point, you could hardly call what you’re doing “private sharing”. Now, the truth is that these situations are rather extreme and unrealistic, because of physical and human limitations; you can only copy a tangible work as many times as you can afford it, and answer to as many online requests for sharing as you’ve got time to. Yet, in case of this happening, it is not logical to set an arbitrary number after which “private” becomes “public”, so in case a copyrighted work is copied and shared privately in large-enough quantities as to be brought into legal question, it should be left up to a court to decide based on intent, scope and method of sharing, and whether the person sharing the work openly promoted it, to determine whether it was fair private sharing or public, given this is simply a gray area where arbitrary solutions would be too ridiculous. In such cases, sharing a movie through a chatbot which provides you with it when asked would be a form of “public sharing”, even if there needs to be interaction with a form of mediator first, since in this case it is automated and not different from clicking on a download link.

What about digital ownership?

Many forms of multimedia provide a form of digital “ownership” through licenses (such as software) or by giving unlimited access to an item by linking it to one’s account on a website or application (such as with games on Steam, or music on Bandcamp). Sharing games bought on Steam, software bought from its developer, or music bought from Bandcamp privately (as in, the digital files comprising these forms of media), should be considered the same as doing it with the tangible counterparts of these works; legal, implying you have bought the digital work yourself. Sharing it publicly (piracy), though, or selling a copy of these digital works without authorization, would still be infringement of copyright law, since you’d be profiting off someone else’s work and, on top of that, it would be selling a non-scarce item over which you cannot lose ownership unless its use is limited through licenses, in which case, it would not be different to selling a book one purchased, since you’re selling your access to it.

What if someone makes an indirect profit from sharing copyrighted works?

Say that someone puts up a website that shares pirated copyrighted books, but makes money through advertising. The first issue would be that they’re publicly sharing the works, which would still be illegal, as mentioned before. Nevertheless, if they managed to find a way of indirectly profiting from sharing these works privately, as long as they aren’t making the person receiving the work pay them for it (since that’d just be buying the copyrighted work, directly or indirectly), it should not be a problem, since it’d lead to many cases in which you’d have to arbitrarily decide whether that indirect profiting is legal or not, thus it couldn’t be objectively and consistently enforced. For instance, if I’ve got a website which I advertise for downloading those books, but I also use it to sell my own books, then you’d run into a gray area whereby you’d have to determine whether the profit I made from my own books is thanks to the fact people visited my website to download copyrighted works. In this case, only direct causation should be applied: profits made indirectly cannot be punished due to their nature being entirely up for interpretation and bound to multiple externalities, but profits made through direct transactions in exchange for copyrighted material would remain legally punishable.

How would creators keep revenue if their works can be shared widely?

This, perhaps, is the most valid concern of all. Since any creator depends on the revenue of their work, allowing people to share it to greater extents legally could, theoretically, reduce their income significantly. A proposal would be to trigger all these aforementioned points a certain amount of time after a work is published (for example, a year), so, you’d buy a book, and a year after the book was published, you’d have the right to share it publicly, albeit without the possibility to profit from it. This would allow for profits to be kept when they’re generally at the highest, which is upon release.

Additionally, it is important to note that in the modern world, a majority of people no longer actually directly pay for most media. Music is often listened to through streaming platforms, which pay royalties to the musicians or labels. Books are normally read through various subscription services and still purchased due to the fact that people simply like feeling the paper in their fingers when reading. Videogames are almost entirely bought through digital stores, which apply DRM to prevent piracy. Movies are watched at a cinema for the experience, or through streaming. In reality, most media these days tends to have copyright basically sidelined, because the methods used to share them and consume them already provide profits without the need for copyright enforcement (even if it does protect their business models), mostly out of convenience; people prefer paying a fee to watch movies on Netflix or play a game on Steam rather than to pirate it. On top of this, the increasing sophistication of DRM systems and other anti-piracy technology is capable of rendering copyright largely pointless in many cases, as piracy becomes harder through anti-piracy innovation which, ironically, exists to fix the shortcomings of copyright law.

What would creators do once their copyright runs out?

Often, when one proposes the idea of outright abolishing copyright, the first question people ask tends to be: “are you stupid?”. Naturally, after one takes due offense, the next thing they ask is: “what would writers, musicians, directors and others do without copyright protecting their profits?”. This is a great question, because it certainly does touch on what’s practically one of the reasons copyright exists in the first place (at least on paper): to allow people to make a living out of creative works. One could argue that if you suddenly decide to get rid of copyright, then an author like Haruki Murakami, or a musician such as Taylor Swift, would simply find themselves without a source of income, nor any reason to continue writing.

My first answer is rather simple: I think some people have a rather alarming lack of faith in humanity and good will, and that’s likely just projection. My second answer, which is the one that gets to the issue, is that, at least in this case, I am not (yet) proposing to simply get rid of copyright altogether. Under my proposed framework, authors would retain a large degree of control over their own creative works, which they could obviously use to profit. The issue, though, is that just as much as copyright gives authors a reason to write, filmmakers a reason to film, and musicians a reason to music (what do you mean “music” is not a verb?), it also ironically gives them just as much reason not to. For instance, musicians like Vanilla Ice or Gotye made themselves a fortune from just one song, while others, like game developer Markus “Notch” Persson, made himself a billionaire by creating a simple game about placing blocks, called Minecraft. All three of them largely stopped producing more music or games after that (at least for a long time). What I mean by this is that, if any one work is successful enough, it can set its author up for life, allowing them to live off its royalties for decades, without there being any financial incentive for them to create anything new, and perhaps even the possibility that anything new could tarnish their reputation if it’s not as good as their previous work.

As I had mentioned in the answer to the previous question, we could have copyrighted works become publicly shareable after a certain amount of time, such as a year, after which the author could possibly see a sharp drop in income. While the concern is understandable, the truth is that, right now, what prevents people from pirating anything they want is not really the existence of copyright law, but the existence of DRM, the limited access to newer works, and just a personal sense of morality. The truth is that, if someone has the money, and likes a creators’ work, it is likely for them to support said creator by willingly paying for their work, even if they can pirate it easily. If this was not the case, platforms like Patreon, Bandcamp or Steam would have long since gone defunct. People just tend to have a predilection towards supporting those they like, as long as they have the financial means to do so.

I also think it is rather reductionist to believe that artists and authors live only from the royalties they make out of their works. Most musicians make much more from touring and playing shows than they make from royalties. Many authors tend to make large sums of money by providing workshops, talks, assisting conventions/expos, and carrying out other similar activities. This is similarly the case for filmmakers, visual artists and other recreational entrepreneurs; often, their own image and person becomes greater than their works.

On top of that, the lack of copyright does in no way mean that any artist’s work would not be sold. As I mentioned, not only do people voluntarily pay for the work of those creators they like, but many are more than willing to pay a hefty amount for any collectible, special edition of any work they like. Signed books, boxed sets, vinyls, pre-order specials, merchandise and other things often get sold out at light speed, for large sums of money too. Why would anyone pay double for a signed version of a book, $100 extra for a boxed set of a game they can buy digitally and play either way, or $50 for a 7” vinyl with two songs they can listen to on Spotify? It’s simple: because we humans have an undeniable love for anything that feels unique or limited, much more so when it is tangible, which is largely the reason why vinyls and cassettes have not yet died and are often sold out by your average do-it-yourself suburban punk band, or why even web novel authors sell out any print versions of their works, even when they’re not copyrighted.

Share This, Freely (As in Allowed), Freely (As in Free Beer), Openly

I do not care to claim any right over what is written in this document. I recognize these ideas as not mine, but belonging to a collective of people past, present, and future, to the millions throughout history who have share similar stances, and to the many millions whom I hope will one day carry this same torch I now carry (and set myself on fire with).

So go ahead and share this, modify this, put it through an AI so that it rewrites it as if it was a medieval theological essay or as if written by Søren Kierkegaard during an LSD trip, do whatever you want with it, but out of nobility, do consider mentioning me as the original author, since I could really use the praise.

Thank you for reading (or scrolling all the way down here after skipping the entire text because you didn’t agree with a particular idea).

Footnotes and References

1. Kinsella, Stephan Norman. Contra la propiedad intelectual (digital re-edition, Spanish translation). 2020, p. 6.
2. Palmer, Thomas Gordon. “Are Patents and Copyrights Morally Justified? The Philosophy of Property Rights and Ideal Objects”. Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 13, no. 3 (Summer 1990). 1990.
3. Athenaeus of Naucratis. Deipnosophistae. c. 200 AD. Referenced edition: Lipsia, Weidmann, 1827.
4. De la Durantaye, Katharina. “The Origins of the Protection of Literary Authorship in Ancient Rome”. Boston University International Law Journal 25, no. 1, Spring 2007.
5. Sendal, René. “Venetian Patent law — 1474”. History Walks in Venice, 2024.
6. Nard, Craig Allen, and Andrew P. Morriss. “Constitutionalizing Patents: From Venice to Philadelphia”. Review of Law & Economic, vol. 2, no. 2, 2006, pp. 12-13.
7. Ibid., p. 50.
8. Statute of Anne, London (1710). UK Parliamentary Archives.
9. The Constitution of the United States of America. 1789. National Archives.
10. “An Act to promote the progress of useful Arts” (Patent Act of 1790). United States Statutes at Large, Vol. 1, 1st Congress, 2nd Session, Chapter 7. 1790.
11. Convention de Paris pour la Protection de la Propiété Industrielle. Concluded March 20, 1883, as revised and amended. World Intellectual Property Organization.
12. Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. Concluded September 9, 1886, as revised and amended (latest Act of Paris, 1971, amended 1979). World Intellectual Property Organization.
13. Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement). Concluded April 15, 1994. World Trade Organization.
14. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Pub.L. 105–304, 112 Stat. 2860. Enacted October 28, 1998. United States Congress.
15. GNU Project. GNU Operating System.
16. Creative Commons.
17. Oxford English Dictionary via Google.
18. ”EpiPen outrage: It costs about $8 to make a 2-pack, engineers say”. The Mercury News, October 1, 2016 (updated March 17, 2017).
19. Luthra, Shefali and Anna Gorman. ”Rising Cost of PrEP to Prevent HIV Infection Pushes It Out of Reach for Many”. National Public Radio, June 30, 2018.
20. ”Generic Truvada costs less than a dollar. Here’s why you’re likely paying much more”. 46brooklyn Research, May 25, 2021.
21. Gardner, Jonathan. ”Two decades and $200 billion: AbbVie’s Humira monopoly nears its end”. Biopharma Dive, March 17, 2022 (updated January 27, 2023).
22. ”Patents Assigned to Cochlear Limited”. Justia Patents. Accessed May 30, 2025.
23. Bowman v. Monsanto Co., 569 U.S. 278 (2013).
24. ”Over 10,000 people die every day the UK blocks Covid vaccine patent waiver”. Global Justice Now, October 2, 2021.
25. ”Access to HIV Treatment and Care”. UNAIDS, 2007.
26. Bollyky, Thomas J. ”Access to Drugs for Treatment of Noncommunicable Diseases”. PLoS Medicine 10, no. 7 (2013): e1001485. July 23, 2013.
27. William A. Haseltine. ”Global Inequities in Access to Drugs Costs Millions of Lives Each Year”. Forbes, April 28, 2024.
28. Naturally, I say “in part” here because it must be understood that patent laws cannot be the sole culprit behind such complex issues: bad economic policy leading to unhealthy environments for both local and foreign investment in healthcare is another huge problem, particularly in underdeveloped nations. For a better understanding of this topic, I recommend reading The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else by Hernando de Soto.
29. To be clear, piracy exists everywhere, even in high-income nations, but within professional settings, it is common for this to be avoided due to stronger implementation of IP law. The reasons for piracy are varied, but one of the main drivers of it is, undeniably, the cost of software, which is in many cases driven up by a lack of competition through patenting. For some statistics on piracy rates by country (from the few which have been studied), refer to A Closer Look at the Countries with Highest Piracy Rates by Bytescare.
30. For further reading on these topics, I recommend Copyright: a roadblock to education in developing countries? by Noha El Labban, The impact of digital copyright law and policy on access to knowledge and learning by Tana Pistorius & Oridachukwu S. Mwim, Copyright and Inequality by Lea Shaver, Unlocking the Potential of Copyright Limitations and Exceptions (L&Es) by Faith O. Majekolagbe, and International Copyright Law and Access to Education in Developing Countries : Exploring Multilateral Legal and Quasi-Legal Solutions by Susan Isiko.
31. Donnelly, Claire, and Meghna Chakrabarti. ”The Internet Archives is in danger”. WBUR, January 7, 2025.
32. Vaziri, Aidin. ”Musicians rally to defend San Francisco’s Internet Archive against $621 million lawsuit”. San Francisco Chronicle, December 10, 2024.
33. Marasigan, Marc. ”Ubisoft Faces Backlash for Making The Crew Completely Unplayable After Its Closure”. MMOs.com, April 25, 2024.
34. Pitts, Lan. ”Ubisoft Is Facing Lawsuit After The Crew Was Removed from Platforms”. GameSpot, November 12, 2024.
35. ”Defunct Online Videogames”. TVTropes. Accessed May 30, 2025.
36. ”Disney’s Snow White ends in disaster: A $215 million flop that shakes studio’s future”. Marca English, April 27, 2025.
37. Bergin, Lauren. ”DragonForce’s Herman Li banned from Twitch amid DMCA drama”. Dexerto, October 27, 2020 (updated November 2, 2020).
38. Here I say “far-fetched” because I believe we are yet to see any instances of an artist being fully erased or censored from the mainstream through copyright just for “wrongthink”, however, artists such as Ted Nugent or Morrissey have had their music deemphasized by their labels and copyright holders for controversial political opinions which have been labeled “far-right” by the media.
39. NTP, Inc. v. Research in Motion, Ltd., 418 F.3d 1282 (Fed. Cir. 2005).
40. Kelley, Rob. ”BlackBerry maker, NTP ink $612 million settlement”. CNN Money, March 3, 2006.
41. Eolas Technologies Inc. v. Microsoft Corp., 399 F.3d 1325 (Fed. Cir. 2005).
42. Rose, Mike. ”Lodsys Files Disputes Against App Store Developers”. Gamasutra, June 1, 2011. See also Lodsys, LLC v. Combay, Inc. et al., No. 2:11-cv-00272 (E.D. Tex. Filed May 31, 2011).
43. Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., No. 5:2011cv01846 (N.D. Cal. Filed Apr. 15, 2011)
44. Albasoos, Hani, and Nabil Al Musallami. The conflict between Apple and Samsung over patents and copyrights. Bussecon Review of Social Sciences 3, no. 3 (2020): 3-5..
45. The Apple Patent Fight Between Apple and Samsung: Interviews with Korean and Korean-American Attorneys. University of California, Irvine School of Law.
46. ”When Patents Attack”. This American Life, National Public Radio, July 22, 2011.
47. European Patent No. EP0617119A3. Co-extraction of Azadirachtin and Neem Oil. Filed March 17, 1994.
48. Anveksha. ”A Case of Bio Piracy: The Neem Patent Controversy”. Office of Advocate Partap Singh, July 12, 2024.
49. U.S. Patent No. 5,663,484. Basmati Rice Lines and Grains. Filed July 8, 1994.
50. Rai, Saritha. ”India-U.S. Fight on Basmati Rice Is Mostly Settled”. The New York Times, August 25, 2001, Section C, p. 1.
51. U.S. Patent No. 5,401,504. Use of Turmeric in Wound Healing. Filed December 28, 1993.
52. Bhowmick, Anusree, Smaranika Deb Roy, and Mitu De. ”A Brief Review on the Turmeric Patent Case With Its Implications on the Documentation of Traditional Knowledge”. NDC E-BIOS 1 (2021): 86.
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60. The Prisoner’s Dilemma is a concept in game theory which seeks to demonstrate how rational individuals, acting in their own self-interest, can lead to a worse outcome for everyone involved than if they had cooperated. In this context, to provide a more concrete example, imagine two companies: Ruritania Tech and Waldavia Solutions. Ruritania Tech creates a new digital storage device, and considers not to patent it, so that Waldavia Solutions (and everyone else) can benefit from it, by producing it, competing over its market share (thus driving prices down), and improving it, but Ruritania Tech also considers the possibility that, if they don’t patent it, Waldavia Solutions might decide to do it instead, thus stealing Ruritania Tech’s invention. Fearing exploitation of IP law by Waldavia Solutions, Ruritania Tech finally decides to protect their creation through IP law, to avoid having it taken away from them by their competitors.
61. In this case, I’m being somewhat reductionist for clarity’s sake. While the broad concept of the steam engine wasn’t patented in a way that prevented its development, there were nevertheless some patents (such as James Watt’s) which did restrict it. The point I’m trying to get to, though, is that the initial spark for these revolutionary ideas wasn’t necessarily IP-driven in the modern sense, nor protected using legislation comparable to what exists now.
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