[Editor Charlie sez: IP article by James Edwards highlights the importance of property rights, even in the “rules based international order”]
It’s important to state—and from time to time reiterate—first principles. Without such touchstones, it becomes too easy to forget what grounds you and why you’re focused on these matters and not others. Indeed, these days, some are all too eager to jettison time-tested truths, thinking the world so wildly changed that old rules no longer apply.
So when the Global Innovation Policy Center (GIPC) issued its statement of intellectual property principles this past September, I signed on without reservation. As the leader of an organization committed to the unalienable right to private property in all its forms–physical, personal, and intellectual–it was a natural fit.