In an interview with the Hoover Institution, American entrepreneur and inventor Palmer Luckey, who founded Oculus VR and designed the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset at just 16 years old, argued that the United States’ patent system effectively acts as a “Chinese instruction manual” for stealing American intellectual property. Meanwhile, he noted, American companies often have to wait 20 years for patents to expire before they can legally build on or replicate the technology, a flaw he says unnecessarily slows U.S. technological progress while China continues to surge ahead.
In the age of artificial intelligence, the United States cannot afford a system that slows domestic innovation while making it easier for foreign adversaries like China to replicate American technology. If the U.S. hopes to remain ahead in the global AI race, this glaring flaw will have to be addressed.
He went on to criticize the current patent system and offered a possible solution that could balance protecting American inventors while making it harder for China to produce knockoff versions of U.S. technology.
.@PalmerLuckey argues that patents now function as publicly accessible "instruction manuals" that let countries like China rapidly copy Western innovations.
— Hoover Institution (@HooverInst) May 23, 2026
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"How do we keep [China] from stealing innovations?" the Hoover Institute's Peter Robinson asked.
"Stop patenting everything," Luckey replied. "Patents are Chinese instruction manuals. You're taking your most valuable stuff."
"Look, the Founding Fathers never predicted a world where you would have a globalized economy where the entire patent office could be downloaded every single morning and then ripped off and then used to fight a war against you," he continued. "The problem that we have right now is that for 20 years or so, between when you file for a patent and when somebody could launch a product that is a ripoff, it means China can just rip it off right away, and Western companies can only rip it off after 20 years. And then you repeat this cycle over and over again for every single generation. It's killing us."
"We need to really fundamentally revisit the patent system," he added. "And I'm not just complaining here. I've got a possible solution. I think we need to massively expand the national security patent process."
His solution involves expanding the patent system to include a tier of classified patents, where only individuals with security clearance, such as defense contractors or the Pentagon, would have access to the invention or piece of military technology. The technology would be kept secret from the public, making it more difficult for foreign adversaries to steal or replicate.
It remains unclear, however, how this system would fundamentally mitigate the threat of Chinese spies or hackers simply accessing the classified patent database, beyond making the information harder to locate or discover.
But the broader argument about patents is cause for concern.
The United States’ intellectual property system is being used against us, and that has to change, whether that means shortening the length of patents, raising the bar for what qualifies, or fundamentally reworking the system altogether. As it stands, stifling competition in the United States while doing little to prevent Chinese theft of American intellectual property is not a recipe for success, especially as the frontier of artificial intelligence is poised to determine the next global order.
