Patent and copyright protections for content and technology have eroded with the emergence of digital platforms over the past two decades, and USC Gould Prof. Jonathan Barnett blames a convergence of business interests and ideological groupthink.
In his book The Big Steal: Ideology, Interest, and the Undoing of Intellectual Property, published by Oxford University Press in November, Barnett cautions about the damage this trend poses to future innovation and suggests policy changes for a return to a more balanced approach.
“The book is an effort to bring together about 15 years of academic research on intellectual property and antitrust policies in tech and content markets to challenge some assumptions that have been dominating the policy debate for a while,” Barnett says.
Barnett highlights that over the past quarter century, courts, Congress and antitrust agencies consistently have taken steps to weaken protections for technology innovators under the patent system and content creators under the copyright system.
It makes sense that digital platforms such as Facebook and Google have advocated for access to content that they can pass along to consumers at no cost while earning revenues from ads and other services. In one of the book’s key insights, Barnett argues that this giveaway business model emerged concurrently with a school of thought in academic and policy discussions that “information wants to be free.”
Barnett argues that this perspective is short-sighted.
“While weakening IP rights expands access to content and tech today, it makes it harder for creators and inventors to receive a return in the future,” Barnett says. “What we end up with is a skewed system that favors giveaway business models while endangering incentives to invest in the artists and inventors that sustain the most robust innovation ecosystems.”
Barnett, who serves as director of the law school’s Media, Entertainment and Technology Law Program, joined USC Gould in 2006. Prior to academia, he practiced corporate law in New York, specializing in private equity mergers and acquisitions transactions.
“I think the somewhat unique perspective I bring is that I try to merge IP and antitrust law with an awareness of business realities, which reflects my professional background,” Barnett says.
His first book released in 2021, Innovators, Firms, and Markets: The Organizational Logic of Intellectual Property, provided an economic history of the U.S. patent system.
With the new book, he hopes to reach more than an academic audience. He wants to influence future policy debates on intellectual property rights, which he fears will continue to erode and place at risk the sustainability of the digital ecosystem for all stakeholders.
Barnett points to the latest form of content giveaway, ChatGPT sifting through masses of online content to generate new literary, visual and musical works, usually without securing consent from the original producer.
He asks for what he calls a “return to reason.”
“The larger objective behind the book is to challenge the longstanding assumption that reducing or weakening IP protections is always in the public’s interest,” Barnett says. “What the book shows is that free stuff is not always good for society. It tends to reduce incentives to produce new innovations and content in the future. Secondly, and perhaps the book’s most novel contribution, a weak IP system often protects the largest firms in the economy, specifically digital platforms that rely on the giveaway business model.”
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