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Annual Escalating Patent Fee Proposal

12 points by pchristensen 17y ago

vaksel 17y ago
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
- alextp 17y ago
  They wouldn't go broke, they'd just stop charging the fees.
- lutorm 17y ago
  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.
fragmede 17y ago
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?
- Tuna-Fish 17y ago
  The big problem there is that by definition nobody in the world is competent to judge the value of a patent on new technology, and the value of different (valid) patents is greatly variable.
  - fragmede 17y ago
    You have a good point, but we already rely on patent examiners to determine whether or not something is patentable. What this would do is give them finer granularity to the decision. Instead of saying yes, your patent on using 1-click "on the internet" is just as valid as the patents on the original transistor, patent examiners would get to say, okay, it's a neat idea, but its not /that/ revolutionary.
    - Tuna-Fish 17y ago
      How would he be capable of making that distinction? For us, people who work in the field, it is often simple to say, but would you be qualified to make such judgments on patents about chemistry? Of course, in the perfect world, the patent office would pay enough to employ an expert on everything. But even still, if a world-class researcher on semiconductors, doing experiments nobody in the world has ever done before, walks into the patent office with this piece of germanium that has a few electrodes stuck into it, and explains how introducing voltage between these two modulates the voltage between the these two, would the examiner understand it? Or would he say: "Oh, this is just the same thing that crystal radios use, on a different material. It's a neat idea, but it's not /that/ revolutionary." What I am trying to say is that not only would your idea not help, but it could actively hurt, for the same reason giving policemen that are ineffective at catching criminals more power does. If someone is unable to judge on the validity of something, giving him more power to do so can only hurt. Also, from your post one can read that you think the patent office made the 1-click patent as powerful as the patent on transistors. This is just not true -- the patent office does not give strength to patents, the justice system does. Just because you have a patent on the wheel (like a guy in Australia does) doesn't mean you get to charge everyone biking -- for your patent to be used, it must be brought in front of a judge first. There, the patent can be judged much better than it ever could be in a patent office, because it is always adversarial, and the venue is as clean as we can make it.
lpolovets 17y ago
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?

12 points by pchristensen 17y ago

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

alextp 17y ago
They wouldn't go broke, they'd just stop charging the fees.
lutorm 17y ago
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.

fragmede 17y ago

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?

Tuna-Fish 17y ago
The big problem there is that by definition nobody in the world is competent to judge the value of a patent on new technology, and the value of different (valid) patents is greatly variable.
- fragmede 17y ago
  You have a good point, but we already rely on patent examiners to determine whether or not something is patentable. What this would do is give them finer granularity to the decision. Instead of saying yes, your patent on using 1-click "on the internet" is just as valid as the patents on the original transistor, patent examiners would get to say, okay, it's a neat idea, but its not /that/ revolutionary.
  - Tuna-Fish 17y ago
    How would he be capable of making that distinction? For us, people who work in the field, it is often simple to say, but would you be qualified to make such judgments on patents about chemistry? Of course, in the perfect world, the patent office would pay enough to employ an expert on everything. But even still, if a world-class researcher on semiconductors, doing experiments nobody in the world has ever done before, walks into the patent office with this piece of germanium that has a few electrodes stuck into it, and explains how introducing voltage between these two modulates the voltage between the these two, would the examiner understand it? Or would he say: "Oh, this is just the same thing that crystal radios use, on a different material. It's a neat idea, but it's not /that/ revolutionary." What I am trying to say is that not only would your idea not help, but it could actively hurt, for the same reason giving policemen that are ineffective at catching criminals more power does. If someone is unable to judge on the validity of something, giving him more power to do so can only hurt. Also, from your post one can read that you think the patent office made the 1-click patent as powerful as the patent on transistors. This is just not true -- the patent office does not give strength to patents, the justice system does. Just because you have a patent on the wheel (like a guy in Australia does) doesn't mean you get to charge everyone biking -- for your patent to be used, it must be brought in front of a judge first. There, the patent can be judged much better than it ever could be in a patent office, because it is always adversarial, and the venue is as clean as we can make it.

lpolovets 17y ago

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?