The Hidden Cost of ‘Free’: The Big Steal Shines a Light on the Domestic Threat to U.S. IP Rights - P3
- Shidonna Raven
- 1 hour ago
- 2 min read
By Bruce Berman
January 9, 2025
Source: IP Watchdog
Photo / Image Source: Unsplash,
Beyond the Legal Argument
What The Big Steal does brilliantly is articulate the dilemma less in legal than economic and societal terms. Barnett enumerates the legislative and judicial origins of the crisis, touching on decisions like eBay v. MercExchange, which effectively halted injunctions for invention theft and altered rule-of-law, but spends more time on the innovation and commercial impacts of IP abuse, which are difficult to measure and challenging to convey. Barnett explains:
“Academic and policy discussion has long been dominated by what I will call loosely the ‘information wants to be free’ school of thought. With few exceptions, a worldwide echo chamber occupied by scholars, judges, regulators, and legislators holds that intellectual property (IP) rights are often or typically a monopoly franchise that confers undeserved windfalls on overcompensated pharmaceutical firms and legacy entertainment companies.”
Underlying the legislative and judicial contributions to the impaired IP system is political influence and financial power; highly capitalized businesses that are more concerned with short term shareholder value than innovation they cannot manage, national security or ethics. Google exists in large part because of a patentable algorithm its student founders shared with Stanford University in the 1990s. After the company had achieved success, it took pains to make sure no such patented inventions would threaten its leadership.
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