
Annual Escalating Patent Fee Proposal - pchristensen
http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2010/02/annual-escalating-patent-fee-proposal.html
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lpolovets
I like the spirit of this but not the implementation.

Currently, if you pay 10k or whatever, you get at a patent for ~20 years. If
your idea is valuable, others will (hopefully) be willing to pay royalties. If
not, you'll be discouraged from filing fluff patents in the future.

If fees start low and escalate every year, there's much more of a game theory
aspect. On the inventor side, you have an incentive to apply for 10 silly
patents and play the lottery on each for a year instead of filing for 1 good
patent that is actually valuable. On the other side, someone considering
paying to use a patent might think "Gee, if we make a deal now, we have to pay
royalties, but if we wait a year, then there's a good chance Joe Patentholder
will not be able to pay the required fees, and then we can use his idea for
free!" This doesn't mean Joe's idea is not valuable, but the incentive to wait
a few months makes a patent's value too unpredicatable.

Also, what if you're negotiating with someone after 2 years and 11 months, and
they decide to stall for a month to apply negotiating pressure?

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fragmede
One thing the patent system wishes to hold up as a possibility that it allows
is that of the lone inventor who solve the world's problems with a single
patent. The patent that leads them to 'the good life'. (Never mind that it
rarely happens.) This escalating patent fee proposal eliminates this mythical
lone inventor.

A different angle that I've wondered about is of compulsory licensing. In
copyrights and songwriting, there is a trio of copyright judges that determine
the going rate for music in $/minute, and anyone can then reproduce music by
paying that price without any negotiation. Of course, better deals can be
worked out between parties, but that option is always there. Would it be
possible to apply the same sort of thing to patents, to effect a positive
change where one is desperately needed?

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alextp
This is a very interesting idea, but I think it would be virtually
unlegislateable with patents because, among other reasons, you can (and people
do) patent things that do not have a consistent unit you charge for (and that
don't even go into the final product). For a cheap example, take two
pharmaceutical compounds, one that works better in 1mg doses and another that
works better on 100mg doses. Should the second be a hundred times as expensive
as the first or not? Or suppose someone devises a new way of manufacturing
battery cells that are exactly equal to current batteries except the process
is a lot cheaper. The fee would apply one-time to the company that used this
patented process or would it apply to all products built with this process?
And how would, say, the fees of a 9volt and an AAA battery be balanced?

So I guess the patent system is too broad for its own good.

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lutorm
I don't understand your comment. The fee would apply to the patent _holder_ ,
for retaining the patent. The licensing fees could be whatever the patent
holder wants, if they decide to license it. That's no different from today.

If the new way of manufacturing battery cells is of no commercial value and
that you don't make any money off of it, then what's the point of holding the
patent?

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alextp
I was responding to the $/minute equivalent to song licensing earlier in the
thread.

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vaksel
great way to screw over the small patent holders. A big corporation can afford
to pay 100,000 to keep a patent, a small time inventor would go broke by year
3

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lutorm
If the revenue they get from the patent makes the patent worth holding, then
they wouldn't. And if they don't make 100k off of it, then maybe it's not
worth holding the patent for longer?

The example rises a bit steeper and starts lower than I would have suggested,
but it seems reasonable to me. After all, the supposed point of patents is to
make it commercially valuable to invest in research by giving you a guaranteed
return if the research pays off. If you're not getting any money from your
patent, then you're no worse off releasing it than sitting on it for nothing.
But society will be better off if patents that aren't used are eliminated.

