

Idea: Non-profit that will buy patents and offer them open-source - Georgehoot

Thoughts?
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ImprovedSilence
Have you thought about how it would acquire money to acquire the patents?
Would you run the fundraising circuit and solicit donations?

Also, I know what your question means, be careful of your wording "open
source", patents are, by nature, open source, ie you can view what makes them
work. (this is part of the point of patents) It's the licensing them that's
the tough part, as they don't exactly operate under anything like the
Apache/BSD/GNU license.

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revorad
I was surprised when I found out a few years ago that patent means the
opposite of latent.

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senjutsuka
Add a twist to it. Make a specific licensing agreement that requires a payment
to the Non-profit in the amount of .001% of profits in trade for use. You
could even stipulate a floor and ceiling (minimum payment 10000 max 100000).
Being a non-profit all the money returned should go directly into purchases of
further patents. This could even be explicitly stated as part of the license
agreement making it more of a paying it forward agreement.

The idea here is that you are getting a risk-less technology, but if you do
hit it large you have to pay it forward in a very minimal amount. And of
course you are afforded the 'patent umbrella' by utilizing tech you know is in
a portfolio and properly documented/owned.

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iqster
Too many crap patents out there.

Variation: a consortium where all participates share their patents in a common
pool. If you are in the consortium, you promise not to sue any of the
participants.

This is good because startups can join the consortium. It needs at least some
good patents inside it to bootstrap. As the patent portfolio of this
consortium gets better, larger players have an incentive to join.

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fuu
Isn't that the pitch for Intellectual Ventures?

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iqster
Heh ... I should have specified ... free/open membership to all ... as long as
you agree not to sue other members of the group. I don't think IV does that.

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damoncali
If you're going to ask companies to abandon their competitive advantages in
exchange for cash, you better have a ton of it. And you best be able to tell
which ones are _really_ advantages, or you'll wind up losing a ton of it
without meaningful impact.

I can see the ibankers frothing at the thought of it all.

