Intellectual property laws are a government subsidy for companies that won't foot the bill to secure their own product. Fugative slave patrols were similar in intention, force the taxpayer to shoulder the cost of enforcing slavery to make slave owners more profitable.

Of course this is beside the point, because nostr is open source, and if it was using IP unlawfully then they would just say that. Instead they are muddying the waters by dissolving the distinction between who can see the code (anyone) and who can merge new code to the main branch (restricted, just like every single other open source project in the world).