3 ms·
How would I do it? I would create a patent pool administered by a non-profit that only grants licenses (for free) to people or entities who do not own their ow
by burgerbrain 15y ago
How would I do it?
I would create a patent pool administered by a non-profit that only grants licenses (for free) to people or entities who do not own their own patents or own other entities which own patents. Owners of patents would not be granted licenses even for a fee. Patents would be donated to the pool as a form of charity.
No idea if that would work, but that's what I'd try. A key problem I see is that getting a patent is expensive, it's hard for individuals (from whom most contributions would undoubtedly come) to compete with companies who make a game of churning out as many patents as possible (IBM for example). If however it became large enough, and there were changes in the current system to make defensive patents less valuable, hopefully it could reach a certain critical mass where it would make sense for companies to gift all their patents to the pool in order to gain access to the others.
Startups without existing patents would of course benefit from this.