I think alibaba is missing a huge opportunity. They need to create a kickstarter type site where 1-3% of the sales go to your design and anyone can copy it and sell it on his site(s) and you get the design fee.
While I like this idea, it still runs into the same issue as patents with respect to enforcement. It would be very difficult to get all the copycats to actually fork over the 1-3% of sales on their knockoff product.
The solution to that seems easy: Preferred placement. Alibaba can simply promote the vendors who have signed on to the design royalties system, possibly penalizing those who have not.
The 1-3% IP overhead then becomes effectively a marketing overhead.
I don't really see the point of this comment: Above is a proposal to use a tool to accomplish a goal. It presumes the goal is desired by the actor. If it is not, they are free to use the tool for other purposes.
Because there are multiple actors required to make the proposal work as stated. How are all the actor's purposes aligned by the proposal such that you get a positive sum for all of the required parties?
They already pay 3% to aliexpress marketplace anyway, just jack the price up 1-3% and if you submitted the design before the listing was created part of the money goes to you..
basically it would be a private patent system for the largest world wide marketplace
That's not what I meant. How do you associate the original idea with the actual product being sold on Alibaba/express? Vendors could just create alternate listings with a slightly different title for what is actually the same product and avoid paying the 1-3%. Obviously they might miss out on some brand recognition, but on razor thin margins it would probably be worth it. Enforcement would require someone actively looking at the listings, or depend on the "idea holder" filing complaints against violators.
they make it so that you get companies to bid on your design, you can also sell slightly unpolished products to the backers and then create a bigger batch with either the same company or another one.
