Weakening IP hurts innovation

Despite overwhelming evidence supporting IP’s vital import, the misleading anti-IP campaign continues to influence Congress, the Biden administration, and international bodies.14 Most opponents of robust IP protection distrust big business and oppose private markets. At the heart of their opposition lies the belief that redistribution should trump growth and innovation. For them, weakening IP only hurts capitalists while helping the billions of workers and consumers around the world. For them, the impoverished masses in the developing world are hurt by IP. For them, global interests trump American interests. For them, the masses deserve free goods and services. For them, shareholders (and not employees) benefit from IP. For them, big companies benefit from IP, and not small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). And for them, IP hurts innovation. In other words, they know that if they are to advance their agenda of elimination of IPR they must paint IP as completely worthless, and even harmful, because it only enriches the rich and powerful. Anti-IP advocates make claims that are flat-out wrong and ignore data, the historical record, and voluminous academic evidence to the contrary. Indeed, IP creates jobs, empowers creators, and generates export revenues. It’s a nice narrative and one that anti-IP advocates and economic progressives such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Public Knowledge, Joe Stiglitz, Dean Baker, and Arjun Jayadev—some of the loudest opponents of IP—assert in their quest. Many people, including those who should know better, are taken in by it, usually because they are good-hearted individuals who support making the world a better place. But the claims anti-IP advocates make often are flat-out wrong and ignore data, the historical record, and voluminous academic evidence to the contrary. Indeed, IP creates jobs, empowers creators and innovators, and generates export revenues. IP also promotes creativity and provides consumers with better products and services.15