You Can't Own Ideas: Essays on Intellectual Property

Stephan Kinsella's collected writing against patent and copyright, from a 1995 letter written while he was a young patent attorney through 2023. Its three dozen chapters run from short summaries and the streamlined "Law and Intellectual Property in a Stateless Society" to history, policy proposals, and transcripts of talks and debates, including his 2021 Soho Forum debate with Richard Epstein.

Kinsella argues that ideas are not scarce, so property rights in them can only be enforced as claims over other people's physical property. He recommends chapters 4, 6 and 7 as the core of the case. This is the combined PDF edition of the collection, 505 pages.