Intellectual property is our bedrock; Daily Journal, May 17, 2025

 Phil Kerpen, Daily Journal; Intellectual property is our bedrock

"Elon Musk is probably the second-most powerful man in the world these days, so when he responded to Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s “delete all IP law” post with “I agree,” we need to take this radical proposal seriously.

Musk and Dorsey want their AI bots to remix all the world’s content without having to worry about who owns it, but it’s important that we slow down and start from first principles, or we risk undermining one of the foundations of our Constitution and economic system.

The moral case for IP was already powerfully articulated prior to American independence by John Locke. In his 1694 memorandum opposing the renewal of the Licensing Act, Locke wrote: “Books seem to me to be the most proper thing for a man to have a property in of any thing that is the product of his mind,” which is no doubt equally true of more modern creative works. Unlike physical property, which is a mixture of an individual’s work effort and the pre-existing natural world, creative works are the pure creation of the human mind. How could they not then properly be owned by their authors?

The Constitution cements this truth. Article I, Section 8 empowers Congress “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” This clause isn’t incidental; it’s a deliberate choice to recognize inventors and authors properly have a property right in their creations and is the only right expressly protected in the base text of the Constitution, before the Bill of Rights was added...

Deleting all IP law is like banning free speech to stop misinformation — it might narrowly accomplish its goal, but only by destroying what we ought to be protecting."

Protecting intellectual property still matters in a pandemic; Washington Examiner, April 21, 2020

Kevin Mooney, Washington Examiner; Protecting intellectual property still matters in a pandemic

"With businesses now under pressure as a result of COVID-19, they can hardly afford to absorb the costs associated with patent allegations that cannot be substantiated under close scrutiny. 

That’s why it’s important to preserve a trial-like procedure organized within the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that makes it possible to review the legitimacy of patents through a streamlined, cost-effective process that avoids expensive litigation. 

Unfortunately, some lawmakers (such as Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware) are pushing legislation that would gut and dilute what is known as the inter partes review process, which provides important safeguards against patents that should not have been issued. 

A better solution would be for policymakers to provide those businesses harmed by the coronavirus with greater assurances and predictability. They can do this by defending and strengthening the inter partes review process as a tool to eliminate low-quality, wrongly granted patents that harm the economy, stifle innovation, and cost jobs. 

There’s no disputing the fact that patent examiners are overburdened. Government records show that in 2018, there were 640,000 patent applications filed, but fewer than 8,200 patent examiners available to do a thorough review. On average, patent examiners only have about 19 hours to evaluate a patent application. Under these time constraints, a handful of ill-conceived applications are approved."