Former Trump official: intellectual property is the ‘great equalizer’

The New York Times, Chicago Tribune and USA Today have sued OpenAI, alleging it used their articles to train models in violation of copyright protections; the U.S. Department of Justice filed a brief supporting OpenAI’s broad interpretation of fair use. The opinion argues that weakening intellectual-property protections could disadvantage smaller innovators, citing research that companies were 55% higher in employment growth and 80% higher in sales growth five years after obtaining their first patent than companies without one. The article is commentary and reports no court ruling or market reaction.

Analysis

This is a policy argument, not evidence that courts or Congress will adopt either side’s position. The investable mechanism is whether training on copyrighted material remains broadly permissible or instead requires negotiation and payment. A narrower fair-use outcome could increase the value of publisher archives and strengthen publishers’ bargaining leverage, but any benefit to NYT or TDAY depends on the eventual scope of permitted use, enforceability, and licensing economics—not simply on winning a case. Conversely, expansive fair use could lower a potential input cost for AI developers, while leaving open other routes to differentiation such as licensed data, user-generated content, and synthetic data.

Near term, this commentary alone is unlikely to change cash flows; legal milestones and any settlement or licensing disclosures matter more. Over 1–3 months, watch court decisions, procedural developments, and whether publishers or AI firms announce reproducible commercial licensing terms. Over 6–18 months, the structural issue is whether rights holders can monetize archives without making access or compliance costs a barrier to smaller AI entrants. That could advantage well-capitalized platforms and entrench them even as it supports publishers’ negotiating power—a second-order effect the pro-IP argument understates.

The article’s Stryker example concerns historical patent litigation and does not establish a current change to SYK’s outlook. Likewise, eBay v. MercExchange is a legal case, not an event involving eBay Inc. (EBAY). The contrarian point: a favorable ruling for publishers may produce limited incremental revenue if licensing rates are modest or substitutes are readily available; an adverse ruling could still leave publishers with bargaining power over high-quality, current material.

Key Decisions for Investors

• No directional trade on NYT or TDAY from this opinion piece alone. Treat both as event-driven watch items; verify each company’s exposure, litigation costs, any licensing agreements, and management commentary before sizing a position.
• Set a catalyst alert for material court rulings, settlement terms, or legislation affecting AI training and copyrighted works. Reassess publisher exposure if a decision changes the scope of fair use or if disclosed licensing economics demonstrate meaningful revenue rather than only negotiating leverage.
• If a restrictive ruling is confirmed and licensing terms are commercially material, consider a modest long bias in directly exposed publishers such as NYT and TDAY, with the thesis invalidated by immaterial disclosed payments, broad carve-outs, or readily adopted substitutes. Do not use SYK or EBAY as proxies for this dispute.
• If broad fair use is upheld, do not assume a direct listed-company beneficiary from this data: OpenAI is not among the supplied identities, and any read-through to public AI-related companies requires company-specific evidence of training-data costs and exposure.