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How does that work? You may have an idea but the actual development may involve 100s of people and the patent might involve a small aspect of the product. How d
by pkaye 9y ago
How does that work? You may have an idea but the actual development may involve 100s of people and the patent might involve a small aspect of the product. How do assign a value to the patent?
Also you are right that this system results in lots of low quality patents. I used to see at one employer chip designers cranking out 5-6 cell designs on a quarterly basis making an $10k extra a quarter. Maybe 1% of those would actually be implemented but it is worth it for the company to get every potential solution either as prior art or patented.
- wolf550e 9y agoIf the company uses the invention, it's hard to quantify the income from the patent, but if they license the patent to another company it's very easy.
- Rebelgecko 9y agoLike someone else said, mostly licensing. The place where I work is a bit unusual (non profit, don't really have "products" and when we do it's typically a small team so everyone gets to be on the patent). I'm sure it's harder to divvy up at Intel, where a new CPU generation might take advantage of dozens of patents.
- Buge 9y agoIf your company's business model is to license patents, then you should align your employees' incentives to that, give them money when patents are licensed. That's what your employer does. If your company's business model is to build and sell products, and prevent competitors from being as good, and avoid getting sued, then it's beneficial to have as many patents as possible. So Intel also aligns its employees' incentives with with its business model, by giving an incentive to create as many patents as possible.