The Kinsella on Liberty podcast covers libertarian theory and applications, especially from an Austrian, Rothbardian and anarchist perspective. The podcast is released irregularly, occasionally includes a short monologue or interview or discussion with someone else, but consists mainly of speeches, lectures, and interviews on other podcasts, often on the topic of intellectual property, but on other topics as well. Youtube video links are provided on the website where available, at https://stephankinsella.com/kinsella-on-liberty-podcast/.
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The Kinsella on Liberty podcast covers libertarian theory and applications, especially from an Austrian, Rothbardian and anarchist perspective. The podcast is released irregularly, occasionally includes a short monologue or interview or discussion with someone else, but consists mainly of speeches, lectures, and interviews on other podcasts, often on the topic of intellectual property, but on other topics as well. Youtube video links are provided on the website where available, at https://stephankinsella.com/kinsella-on-liberty-podcast/.
.@NSKinsella has proposed a number of patent reforms if we decide as a society not to abolish the patent system. This is, in my view, a more plausible way forward (politically) instead of demanding the abolition of patents.https://t.co/q3a0U2HQJ6
In this annotated extract, I… https://t.co/Jm36N2kjxa pic.twitter.com/Fs1caiVven
— Sanjeev Sabhlok (@sabhlok) June 4, 2025
Sabhlok's markup of my proposals:
See How to Improve Patent, Copyright, and Trademark Law and “Reducing the Cost of IP Law,” Mises Daily (2010). See also Tabarrok’s Launching the Innovation Renaissance: Statism, not renaissance
How to Improve Patent, Copyright, and Trademark Law
by Stephan Kinsella on February 1, 2011
[From my Webnote series]
This is included as ch. 41 of Stephan Kinsella, ed., The Anti-IP Reader: Free Market Critiques of Intellectual Property (Papinian Press, 2023).
See also proposals for reform in “Reducing the Cost of IP Law”; also Do Business Without Intellectual Property (Liberty.me, 2014); KOL164 | Obama’s Patent Reform: Improvement or Continuing Calamity?: Mises Academy (2011). And FDA and Patent Reform: A Modest Proposal
***
From my Mises blog post a year ago:
How to Improve Patent, Copyright, and Trademark Law
Archived comments (below)
January 13, 2010 by Stephan Kinsella
As I note in my article “Radical Patent Reform Is Not on the Way,” Mises Daily (Oct. 1, 2009), there is a growing clamor for reform of patent (and copyright) law, due to the increasingly obvious injustices resulting from these intellectual property (IP) laws. However, the various recent proposals for reform merely tinker with details and leave the essential features of the patent system intact. Patent scope, terms, and penalties would still be essentially the same. In the second article of this two-part series, “Reducing the Cost of IP Law,” Mises Daily, published today, I propose various reforms to the existing patent system–short of abolition–that would significantly reduce the costs and harm imposed by the patent system while not appreciably, or as significantly, reducing the innovation incentives and other purported benefits of the patent system. I list these changes below in generally descending order of importance, without elaboration, as they are discussed further in “Reducing the Cost of IP Law”:
Patent Law
Reduce the Patent Term
Remove Patent Injunctions/Provide Compulsory Royalties
Add a Royalty Cap/Safe Harbor
Reduce the Scope of Patentable Subject Matter
Provide for Prior-Use and Independent-Inventor Defenses
Instantly Publish All Patent Applications
Eliminate Enhanced Damages
Add a Working/Reduction to Practice Requirement1
Provide for Advisory Opinion Panels
Losing Patentee Pays
Expand Right to Seek Declaratory Judgments
Exclude IP from Trade Negotiations
[update: add a fair-use defense2
reinvogorate the reverse doctrine of equivalents defense ]
Other Changes
Increase the threshold for obtaining a patent
Increase patent filing fees to make it more difficult to obtain a patent
Make it easier to challenge a patent’s validity at all stages
Require patent applicants to specify exactly what part of their claimed invention is new and what part is “old” (e.g., by the use of European-style “characterized in that “claims)
Require patent applicants to do a search and provide an analysis showing why their claimed invention is new and nonobvious (patent attorneys really hate this one)
Kinsella On Liberty
The Kinsella on Liberty podcast covers libertarian theory and applications, especially from an Austrian, Rothbardian and anarchist perspective. The podcast is released irregularly, occasionally includes a short monologue or interview or discussion with someone else, but consists mainly of speeches, lectures, and interviews on other podcasts, often on the topic of intellectual property, but on other topics as well. Youtube video links are provided on the website where available, at https://stephankinsella.com/kinsella-on-liberty-podcast/.
