The Hidden Cost of ‘Free’: The Big Steal Shines a Light on the Domestic Threat to U.S. IP Rights - P4

Shidonna Raven
31 minutes ago
2 min read

January 9, 2025

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Under the rubric that “information wants to be free,” writes Barnett, significant portions of the scholarly, tech and legal communities have advocated for the erosion of property rights. Some owners are simply too small to matter; they are seen to impede “real” progress and as adding unfairly to consumers’ costs. In their view, in-licensing is unnecessary and those who out-license are engaging in a kind of “hold-up.” They would have the courts and policy makers believe they are the victims, and the pirates are those whose IP rights have been stolen.

F. Scott Kieff, former ITC Commissioner and professor of Law at George Washington University, has advised four U.S. presidential administrations about security. Kieff says vested interests spent over $1 billion to help push through the 2011 America Invents Act (AIA) and establish what became the onerous Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), a tribunal that has come to invalidate all or parts of up to 85% of the patents it reviews and that have been issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Those same interests and their various proxies perpetuate misinformation about the patent and copyright system, including the infamous patent “troll” meme, an insidious misrepresentation of patent licensing that has negatively branded patent licensing.

The Big Steal puts into perspective the IP system and the various interests that have come to shape it and details the effects of allowing them to do so. This book reminds readers of something the Center for Intellectual Property Understanding (CIPU), the nonprofit I chair, has been saying since 2016: inventor/creators, patent and copyright owners, businesses and individuals, and anyone who attempts to monetize IP rights, are in the same sinking IP-laden ship, weighted by new ideas too numerous to count, digital access too fast to measure, and artificial intelligence too complex to monitor. They would be smart to row together.