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Your comment implies that innovation was impeded in other industries because cosmetics "snatched up" the patents. I'm not so sure. Typically, academic and ins

Your comment implies that innovation was impeded in other industries because cosmetics "snatched up" the patents. I'm not so sure. Typically, academic and institutional researches DNGA* about patents. As a nascent technology shows commercialization potential, there is incentive for the patent holders to find some way of monetizing. I would imagine (but admittedly do not know) that a cosmetics patent holder would have little reason to refuse to license to some entity operating in a very different field.

smsm42 8y ago
You are assuming the original patent holder still exists and holds the patent. And it's not held by some patent troll aggregator whose sole purpose in life is milking their large patent portfolio and who has no problem refusing to grant license on any of the individual patents if the applicant can't pay whatever they want, and have no incentive to undermine their portfolio profitability and their market worth by offering these licenses too cheap.
AnthonyMouse 8y ago
> I would imagine (but admittedly do not know) that a cosmetics patent holder would have little reason to refuse to license to some entity operating in a very different field. That's not really the problem. The problem is that you have entrepreneurs at the early stages of looking into developing something who discover that it's patented. Just the overhead (paying attorneys) to negotiate a patent license can be thousands of dollars, more if you want to negotiate a good rate. Nobody wants to pay that at Stage 0 before you even do the legwork to determine if there is really a promising product there. But determining that can itself cost many thousands of dollars and nobody wants to do that before knowing they can secure a patent license at a reasonable rate, so you have a chicken and egg problem. Meanwhile there are many promising alternative avenues of research that aren't already encumbered by patents, so people go there instead and come back when the patent is expired.

smsm42 8y ago

You are assuming the original patent holder still exists and holds the patent. And it's not held by some patent troll aggregator whose sole purpose in life is milking their large patent portfolio and who has no problem refusing to grant license on any of the individual patents if the applicant can't pay whatever they want, and have no incentive to undermine their portfolio profitability and their market worth by offering these licenses too cheap.

AnthonyMouse 8y ago

> I would imagine (but admittedly do not know) that a cosmetics patent holder would have little reason to refuse to license to some entity operating in a very different field. That's not really the problem. The problem is that you have entrepreneurs at the early stages of looking into developing something who discover that it's patented. Just the overhead (paying attorneys) to negotiate a patent license can be thousands of dollars, more if you want to negotiate a good rate. Nobody wants to pay that at Stage 0 before you even do the legwork to determine if there is really a promising product there. But determining that can itself cost many thousands of dollars and nobody wants to do that before knowing they can secure a patent license at a reasonable rate, so you have a chicken and egg problem. Meanwhile there are many promising alternative avenues of research that aren't already encumbered by patents, so people go there instead and come back when the patent is expired.