The Big Steal: Ideology, Interest, and the Undoing of Intellectual Property

In The Big Steal, Jonathan Barnett documents the unusual confluence of ideological commitments and business interests behind the across-the-board dilution of legal protections for inventors and artists under U.S. patent and copyright law. Concurrently with the rise of the digital economy and platform-based markets, the Supreme Court, Congress, and antitrust regulators significantly weakened legal protections against the unauthorized use of technological inventions and creative works. Under the popular slogan that "information wants to be free," significant portions of the scholarly and tech communities advocated and welcomed the erosion of property rights in knowledge markets. This policy shift often relied on incomplete or premature findings that mischaracterized the impact of robust intellectual property rights on innovation markets.

Through a rich analysis that draws on law, economics, and political science, and using evidence from a wide range of technology and creative markets, Barnett shows that the depropertization of intellectual assets poses a risk to the U.S. and global innovation ecosystem by shifting economic value toward digital intermediaries and vertically integrated entities and away from the technology and content originators that drive the most robust knowledge economies.