7 ms·

That would eliminate all of SBIR funding, but maybe that’s what you want? I worked for a start up that was spun out thanks to an exclusive license to the techn

• mannerheim 5y ago
  What does the taxpayer get back? Do you pay back the money? Does the government get an ownership stake? And if it didn't exist, does private equity not exist?
  • _delirium 5y ago
    The goal of SBIR is to provide seed funding for American small businesses engaged in innovation, and is one of the more popular parts of federal science funding, across parties. People like small businesses. They don't really like private equity. Making the results of U.S.-funded research exploitable without license by foreign entities is also very unpopular. That is one reason the U.S. does not have a public domain mandate of the kind you propose. I would personally be open to your suggestion that the government should take an ownership percentage in return for its funding. I don't think this has been seriously proposed, but it has interesting implications.
    • biztos 5y ago
      > the government should take an ownership percentage in return for its funding But wouldn't that create a big conflict of interest? WidgetCorp is 10% owned by the Feds, InterWidget is not. Who gets the contract for those $6M widgets in the new fighter jet?
      • Swenrekcah 5y ago
        I have every confidence that the people picking contractors won't let a 10% stake owned by the federal government cloud their judgement. If the stake was owned by any of the relevant institutions then that might play a role, since it could contribute in some way to the institution's budget perhaps. But it's an interesting idea. If the government were to take a percentage in return for funding, there could be an explicit goal of getting out of the position with X times return in less than Y years. X might not have to be particularly large, the goal would only be to cover losses and inflation.
  • unishark 5y ago
    The govt gets an unrestricted license to use the technology produced by SBIR funding. The "R" in SBIR is research. By the end of govt funding (phase II), the company is supposed to commercialize it on their own. The money maxes out around $1M, for producing a prototype only. Compared to private equity, it's only angel-investment-sized funding, but for a high-risk project that requires research to demonstrate so angel investment will not suffice. It is not ready to launch after govt funding.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
• fungi 5y ago
  How does you having a patent 'A' protect you from trolly companies with patent 'B'? Or does it just give you access to funding to fight said tolls?
  • mannerheim 5y ago
    If they're trolly but a real company, each of you can sue the other; it's basically MAD. Won't work with an actual troll/NPE, but it's the reason why tech companies build patent portfolios even if they don't intend to sue anyone.
    • m-ee 5y ago
      Yeah you nailed it. This was ostensibly a technology company but they haven’t put out any real products I’m aware of in long time and have extracted some large amounts from big tech over the years. If they tried to knock us off or invalidate our patent the university would have gotten involved, that’s not a profitable avenue for them. Without that protection they likely would have set up a meeting to say “oh that’s really interesting work, but you know we have a patent that covers this so really it’s our work you understand”
• Causality1 5y ago
  Someone paying you to do research and then you not giving them the results of that research is theft. Doing it to millions of taxpayers who weren't asked whether they wanted to fund you makes it exponentially worse, not better. Publicly-funded research not entering the public domain is damn near treasonous.
  • cycomanic 5y ago
    Exaggerating a little? There is lots of government subsidies for all sort of company business activities (in many countries companies can get tax credits etc for doing R&D for example). Research funding is one of the smallest fish in this pond.
  • m-ee 5y ago
    It was money explicitly given to the company for the purpose of building a business. But if you wanna view me as a thief for getting my salary from it go ahead, with all the pork barrel spending, tax cuts, iffy DOD contracts out there the SBIR program seems like an odd target of disdain.
  • musicale 5y ago
    > Someone paying you to do research and then you not giving them the results of that research is theft Presumably we wish to incentivize invention. But the idea that the taxpayers should own a significant share of what they pay for has merit. Public domain is interesting because it arguably benefits the rest of the world more than the originating country.
    • cwkoss 5y ago
      > Public domain is interesting because it arguably benefits the rest of the world more than the originating country. I could understand benefits equally, but how does it benefit other countries more than originating country?
      • Karrot_Kream 5y ago
        Net benefit, not gross. Other countries can have the innovation with none of the investment. I can easily think up a scheme where countries pump their brightest to go to a country with good infrastructure and lax public domain rules and reap the benefits.
• zucker42 5y ago
  Not to denigrate your work, but if the company failed in retrospect wouldn't it have been better for society if it didn't have the patent? I would think that the situation where the one company with rights to the invention fails to commercialize it is exactly what we don't want.
  • thereisnospork 5y ago
    No one is going to commercialize anything without exclusive rights. The hard part isn't in creating an invention[0], it's making an invention into a product that can be married to a market. Never mind that if someone out of the public does want to have another go, IP can be bought from the failed company in liquidation or it will be abandoned when filing fees lapse. [0]See every news article about how the latest research out of Misc. U is going to revolutionize lithium batteries, vs. the number of actual revolutions in lithium ion batteries.
    • zucker42 5y ago
      I disagree that no one is going to commercialize anything without exclusive rights. Most things that are commercialized are done so without exclusive rights. We don't see restaurants patent new dishes, yet they create new dishes nonetheless. Most web startups don't have exclusive rights to their ideas. Drugs in the public domain still get produced and sold.
  • m-ee 5y ago
    Do you think there is value in small businesses and startups? The original intent of the patent system was to give inventors a leg up to commercialize their idea before they can be bullied out of the market by large competitors. Without that patent large companies would have taken the idea and either implemented it without giving anything to the inventors, or more likely filed their own IP on the idea, kept it on a shelf, and sued anyone who tried to pursue it. As I mentioned before there was a pretty litigious player in that space. We courted partners and investors, went to trade shows etc. The idea is out there. If anyone wants it bad enough they could contact my old boss and his university to figure out how to license it. Otherwise they can wait 4-5 years and have at it. Giving the IP to someone who deeply understands it and wants to bring it to market is a worthwhile goal in my opinion, even if it its not always attainable.
• lmm 5y ago
  Protecting small businesses from patent trolls sounds like a good use of public funds, but surely there's a better way to do it than patenting university research and then picking particular businesses to bestow defensive patents on.
  • m-ee 5y ago
    I wouldn't call it a defensive patent just because it kept the trolls at bay, it was a genuine innovation we were actively trying to commercialize. And it wasn't just some random business, it was the inventor himself setting out to build the product he envisioned. Unfortunately he didn't have much of a mind for commercial hardware engineering, but it seems fair that he be the one to have a go at it.
• intricatedetail 5y ago
  What was the tech? Often when I read these patents it is something that anyone working in a given field could eventually come up with. It's like claiming new land and then rent seeking.
• ticviking 5y ago
  NSF funding has a different purpose than SBIR funding. If we're paying for it under the justification of "Science is good for the country" then it should enter in the public domain. If we're paying for it because "We want to invest in small businesses" then it should be the property of the business. Programs will need to choose to apply for the kind of grant that makes sense for what they're doing.