[cwel]

>Should I be allowed to charge for the right to interoperate with it?

No.

>What if ... just for my own hardware?

No.

>What if I just want certain select partners?

Sure, you can select between the DoD or Langley.

[wat10000]

So anything which communicates between two pieces of hardware wouldn’t be covered by IP laws?

[barnabee]

Yes. It seems pretty obviously true to me that there should be no legal right to prevent interoperability and no recourse against adversarial interoperability.

The right to say "Compatible with X" or similar where X is a brand should also be protected.

[selfhoster11]

Ideally, yes.