By now, everyone should know about the X post heard around the intellectual property world. On April 11, Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and Block, posted these four words : “delete all IP law.” A few hours later, Elon Musk chimed in with “I agree.” Over the next few days, the media was full of reactions from tech and legal luminaries. Some tech celebrities agreed. “Jack has a point,” posted Chris Messina, ironically on X rival Bluesky. Members of the IP legal community who were quoted in the media objected strongly, as one might expect. 

When I asked several members of the IP legal community if they wanted to comment, the response I got from some was cool.

“These offhand tweets have received far more media attention than they deserve,” said Prof. Edward Lee of Santa Clara University School of Law, adding, “Let’s talk when Block and Tesla allow competitors to freely use their trademarks and trade secrets.”

The professor has a point. Perhaps X posts, shot from the hip, aren’t worth the paper they aren’t written on. But, as documented recently in the Washington Post, “[s]ome X posts appear to have influenced the White House.”. Tech Crunch’s Anthony Ha observed, “the line between a random conversation on Twitter/X and actual government policy is thinner than it used to be.”. And there is strong pressure from Silicon Valley to weaken copyright protection to allow unfettered training of the large language models that are the backbone of Artificial Intelligence (AI). As glib as Dorsey and Musk’s X posts might be, they need to be addressed seriously.

To begin with, my colleague Jim Ko explains in his article, “Delete All IP Law”? Why the Tech Titans Want to Pull Up the Ladder Behind Them,” that intellectual property rights were considered so important to the development of America that they were enshrined in the Constitution by the Founding Fathers. Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 gives Congress the power “[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” 

Building on that, Robert Sterne of Washington, D.C.’s Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein & Fox, PLLC, states, “having represented literally hundreds of startups, emerging companies, and universities – the lifeblood of the USA innovation ecosystem – I can say with absolute certainty that a strong, robust, and predictable intellectual property regime is essential for their commercial success. Any weakening of the USA IP system would disadvantage the future of the nation as China and the European Union continue to evolve and strengthen their IP systems to generate jobs, wealth, and security.”

Scott Kelly, a partner at Banner Witcoff in Washington, zeroes in on patent law, which he says “isn't perfect, but it solves a critical problem. Scientific progress does not benefit from innovators keeping their inventions secret when it is trivial to copy someone else's ingenuity. Patents incentivize a proactive approach to problem solving, and disclosure of those solutions, rather than a world where the best strategy is to let others make the investment and figure it out for you."

The economic consequences of deleting all IP law would be severe. Russell Beck of Beck Reed Riden, LLP, of Boston notes that “IP makes up 90% of the value of S&P 500 companies”, citing Ocean Tomo’s Intangible Asset Market Value Study. He says that “eliminating IP rights would erase that value, stifle innovation, strip the US of its global competitiveness, and cripple the US economy. ‘Deleting’ IP doesn’t level the playing field for AI – it removes the field entirely. It replaces commercial ethics and rights with corporate espionage and IP theft.”

Having recently returned from The Sedona Conference’s Global IP Litigation Conference in The Hague, I am particularly sensitive to the international ramifications of ill-considered attacks on intellectual property. We are already making it difficult for foreign students, artists, and researchers to work in the United States through visa restrictions and academic funding cuts. We would exacerbate the problem if inventors and creators – and the capital backing them – decided that to protect their rights, they need to relocate to a jurisdiction with stronger patent, copyright, and trade secret laws. Many commentators have noted that a weakening of trademark protections would cause a flood of knockoff products into the domestic market, eroding consumer confidence.

Observers are correct to note that intellectual property law isn’t perfect, but we can’t afford to throw it all out. There are tensions in patent law between high tech, pharma, and manufacturing sectors. Trade secrets are becoming more important to startups, but restrict labor mobility. As a retired librarian, I find modern digital copyright restrictions difficult to square with traditional concepts of access to knowledge, but I am also anxious about the future for the musicians and videographers in my family. 

At The Sedona Conference, we stand both for the “rule of law” and strive to move the law forward “in a reasoned and just way” through dialogue and consensus. It’s not easy, and it requires a lot of listening to understand different viewpoints and find common ground. It requires more than a four-word post with potentially dire consequences.