Several high-profile publications, including the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and most recently, USA Today, have sued OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. The papers allege that OpenAI used their articles to train its models in ways that violate copyright protections.
OpenAI argues that it doesn’t need to license the articles for training because of the “fair use” doctrine, a legal principle that allows firms and individuals to use copyrighted material without permission in limited circumstances. The U.S. Department of Justice just filed a brief in support of OpenAI’s expansive interpretation of the fair use doctrine.
Ensuring that OpenAI and other American labs continue to lead the world in developing artificial intelligence — or “super intelligence,” as President Trump recently rechristened it — is critical to our economic and national security. But it’s equally important that federal officials, both at the DOJ and other agencies, and members of Congress, don’t inadvertently undermine the property rights that underpin the U.S. economy.
Copyrights, patents, and other intellectual property protections give authors, inventors, and small companies an incentive to innovate and a way to compete against big companies and wealthy elites who would otherwise take their good ideas without compensation. In other words, they’re the “great equalizer” of the U.S. economy — they level the playing field between small innovators and powerful corporations, giving anyone with a good idea a chance to succeed.
If we want to keep new products flowing and ensure that entrepreneurs can grow their businesses and create jobs, we need to understand and preserve intellectual property protections.
For most of human history, people had no conception that ideas could be treated as property. Even Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, and the other great thinkers of antiquity and the Middle Ages never developed anything resembling our modern understanding of intellectual property.
Only during the Enlightenment did philosophers and governments begin to see the inherent fairness — and economic potential — of giving inventors, artists, writers, and other creators a period of legal protection so they could further develop their ideas and build businesses around them.
America’s Founding Fathers led the charge in establishing such protections.
They penned the U.S. Constitution’s Intellectual Property Clause, which gives Congress the power “To 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.” What made the clause unusual is that it connected a public objective with a private property right, granting authors and inventors a period of legally protected exclusivity to bring their ideas to market.
Our leaders knew that providing an economic incentive — for a limited term — would kickstart innovation, create new businesses, and launch whole new industries. And it did — from machines that transformed harvesting to airplanes that connected us to the world.
They also knew that innovation would help everyday Americans.
Take Elias Howe, the son of a Massachusetts farmer. He had neither great wealth nor a powerful company behind him; he worked at a textile mill and later as a machinist. But he developed a practical sewing machine and received a U.S. patent in 1846. His patent gave him something enormously valuable: ownership of his invention. Even when larger manufacturers entered the market, Howe had a legal right that he could enforce. His invention — and the industry that grew around it — ultimately helped transform clothing manufacturing in America.
Thomas Edison, too, didn’t begin life as a wealthy industrialist. As a boy, he sold newspapers and candy on trains; later, he worked as a telegraph operator. But he had an extraordinary ability to invent — and a patent system that let him turn those inventions into assets. Edison ultimately received over a thousand U.S. patents, which helped him attract investment, build companies, and commercialize technologies ranging from recorded sound to electric lighting.
Or take more modern examples. When J.K. Rowling penned the first chapters of the Sorcerer’s Stone, she was a single mother writing in cafés across Edinburgh, without the resources to print and distribute her manuscript herself. But she owned the copyright to her work, allowing her to partner with a publisher and ultimately license her creation for films, television, theme parks, and Broadway. Her ideas entertained hundreds of millions of people globally — and made her a billionaire in the process.
And when inventor Aaron Krause had created an improved sponge, but needed the funding and expertise to manufacture and distribute it at scale, his patents were a valuable asset he could bring to the table. On Shark Tank, Lori Greiner invested $200,000 in the company and helped turn Scrub Daddy into a business that now generates roughly $220 million annually.
Intellectual property protections also give small companies the power to stand up to much larger competitors.
Consider how medical technology company Acumed started as a family business with a single machinist in the late 1980s. It developed and patented orthopedic devices, including a specialized nail for repairing upper-arm and shoulder fractures. When a medical-device giant copied the technology — despite warnings from its own lawyers about infringement — Acumed went to court.
The smaller company won, with a jury determining willful infringement and a district court granting a permanent injunction preventing further sales.
Stryker tried to use its greater resources to escape accountability. It appealed the decision, and the Federal Circuit even initially vacated the injunction after the Supreme Court established new, more restrictive standards for granting injunctions in its 2006 eBay v. MercExchange ruling.
Thankfully, the district court ultimately granted a new injunction, which a federal appeals court upheld in 2008.
When policymakers weaken intellectual property rights — such as by endorsing an interpretation of the fair use doctrine that renders copyrights toothless, or making it much harder for inventors to secure court injunctions to stop infringement — they enable powerful companies with deep pockets to get away with infringing intellectual property.
That’s why I worked to strengthen intellectual property protections as deputy under secretary of Commerce for intellectual property and deputy director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in the second Trump administration. And it’s why I now choose to lead the Council for Innovation Promotion, a bipartisan coalition advocating for strong intellectual property rights.
Strong intellectual property protections give authors and inventors the ability to turn their ideas into assets, their assets into competitive businesses, and their businesses into new jobs. Indeed, research shows that five years after companies obtain their first patent, they have 55% higher employment growth and 80% higher sales growth than companies that didn’t receive those first patents.
So if America wants innovation, and if Americans want future garage-shop inventors and independent creators to have a fighting chance, we need to preserve our intellectual property system — our great equalizer.
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
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