Protecting IP means that model would refuse to do certain things. Example from pre-AI era - program asks you for license key and refuses to start if it is wrong. But if program deletes random system file when you enter invalid license key (doesn't matter it is brute force attempt or typing error) it is different thing goes well beyond IP protection.

They're not merely protecting their weights.

First, they want government to get involved and regulate frontier model development - even stop it completely.

Second, poisoning output of a model configured on the computers of millions of users goes way beyond protecting IP. That's malware.