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Patents are property and we need taxes/fee on it. $500/year per patent, will ensure use it (if you think it is valuable) or lose it. This is no different from d

• pwg 3y ago
  > Patents are property and we need taxes/fee on it. $500/year per patent Those 'taxes' already exist (at least in the US system). They are called "maintenance fees". See https://www.fr.com/insights/ip-law-essentials/everything-about-patent-maintenance-fees/ https://www.fr.com/insights/ip-law-essentials/everything-abo... Failing to pay the fee causes the patent to expire, and be unable to be used to sue someone. So these troll firms must also be paying these fees to be able to sue based on the patent.
  • madsbuch 3y ago
    This is interesting. So Oracle holding around 52000 patents pays around 23.000.000 USD a year in maintenance?
    • ako 3y ago
      Yes, having patents is expensive. Large corporations often file patents for defensive reasons, and for this they employ multiple patent lawyers full time.
      • madsbuch 3y ago
        Yeah, so add a couple of millions on top oof the 23.000.000 a year for lawyers and other staff.
• robertlagrant 3y ago
  > These taxes can fund free education or healthcare or defense Why only those things?
  • KMnO4 3y ago
    Appeal to emotion. Taxes go towards all publicly funded projects, but it’s easier to convince people that a new tax is a good thing when it goes towards these things that benefit everyone.
• nordsieck 3y ago
  > $500/year per patent, will ensure use it (if you think it is valuable) or lose it. Not really. Some patents are fantastically valuable to patent trolls. Some are not. A $500/year fee isn't going to deter a "company" of lawyers who are making millions soaking businesses with patents that should never have been granted. If you want a scheme that actually does what you want, you'd need something like: The owner of the patent chooses the fee that they pay per year. And anyone can pay that fee * the remaining years on the patent * some multiplier (probably in the 2-10 range) to prematurely end the patent. So, if someone's got a patent on a hamster powered submarine, they can keep it for $1 per year (or whatever the minimum should be). And that's fine... because it isn't harming any one since no one wants to build such a thing. But a patent that a troll is using to milk the industry with will need to have a pretty stiff fee or people won't play ball, they'll just buy out the troll.
  • freejazz 3y ago
    >making millions soaking businesses with patents that should never have been granted. Invalidity arguments and IPRs suddenly aren't things?
    • nordsieck 3y ago
      > Invalidity arguments and IPRs suddenly aren't things? I'm sure that you're aware that when you go to court, the result is never certain. Bad ruling happen all the time.
      • freejazz 3y ago
        The vast majority of these decisions are against the patent owners, which I'm sure you are aware of. Also, I wasn't the one who characterized something as a patent that "should never have been granted."
    • brlewis 3y ago
      The troll can price their licenses slightly less than the presumed legal costs. Then most victims won't fight. Presumption of validity is what makes patent trolling more lucrative than other forms of predatory litigation. You're guilty until proven innocent, because the law assumes that the patent office is generally doing the right thing.
• phpisthebest 3y ago
  >>These taxes can fund free education or healthcare or defense. is it is always a bad idea to ear mark a tax for a specific purpose. Especially if you desire to use the tax as a punitive measure to reduce that which you deem bad for society, if it works now you need to come up with the money for the thing you funded elsewhere because all government programs are permanent Look at smoking, all kind of things were funded on the back of smoking taxes, and when those punitive taxes worked to reduce smoking the revenue dried up but the budgets for for those programs did not so now the money had to come from somewhere else.... Using the tax code to punish or reward behavior is always bad
  • ahtihn 3y ago
    > Using the tax code to punish or reward behavior is always bad Isn't that pretty much the entire purpose of the tax code and why it's so complicated? It's one of the tools the government has to shape behavior. Actual tax revenue doesn't really matter since a permanent deficit and ever-growing debt is apparently fine.
    • phpisthebest 3y ago
      While you are correct given the government debt levels and printing of money, on principle taxation should only be used to raise money for public purposes. Not to incentivize or punish behavior. Allowing the government to use taxation for purposes other than public finance has been and will continue to be an avenue for abuse, and authoritarian control ultimately leading to tyranny
  • shortsunblack 3y ago
    Using tax to punish or reward is called correcting externalities. More formally these taxes are called Pigovian taxes and they are supported by economists from all the schools, in similar vein to a land-value tax, because Pigovian taxes do not hamper economic producitivity. You seem to misunderstand the entire concept of taxation, in its entirety, also. Taxes can either be used to raise revenue, or to correct for externalities. A tax that corrects an externality is valid on its own, EVEN IF, the revenue from that tax is burned or otherwise destroyed. It corrects for market failure, which leads to greater surplus.
• adverbly 3y ago
  This is an interesting point of view. Reminds me in some sense of some of the ethical justifications behind land value tax or property taxes. The intention of legally enforced ownership is primarily to encourage development - and not to incentivize speculation as we seem to be doing in many situations. It seems reasonable to tax such speculation. I'm inclined to agree with you.
• perlgeek 3y ago
  Another valuation/taxation scheme I've read about is: you can value your patent however you want, and it's taxed based on that value. The kicker is: the values are public, and if anybody wants to buy it for something higher than the assigned value (or maybe some fixed percentage above the assigned value), you HAVE to sell. Of course, the buyer is then taxed at the higher value.
  • karaterobot 3y ago
    That seems like a terrible idea! If you underestimate the value of your invention, some big company can own it for $n+$.01. Or if you have invented something valuable but it takes years to get to market with it, you can go bankrupt in the mean time, or have your ownership eaten away by investors who suddenly have a ton of extra leverage over you.
• efitz 3y ago
  No, the fee should be exponential, to keep people from keeping technology out of the public domain longer than necessary. For example, maybe the fee is $10000 for the first year. This doesn't come close to recouping the cost of a single enforcement action, but it makes sure that someone has some skin in the game. Then every year the cost gets 10x more expensive. Of course you are free to choose your own base and multiplier. For someone to keep a patent for 5 years, the total cost would be $10k + $100k + $1M + $10M + $100M = $111110000. Maybe it's worth it for a patent like the light bulb. Probably not worth it for a drinking bird toy. But either way, the value decision is up to the patent holder, and the cost of the patent incentivizes rapid monetization rather than squatting.
  • efitz 3y ago
    Just curious: what about this comment made it worthy of downvoting?
• IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
  Domain names pay per year because there's an ongoing service attached. There's no such thing for patent (besides fee to file) Why punish patent holders because of patent trolls or garbage patents ? Make it unprofitable to be a troll, and they will go away. Trolls need to be tagged , like pirates. There should be rules to make hunting for trolls profitable. For that, you need a "bounty". Here's my take: In any patent dispute[1], the loser will pay as punitive damages (this is the "bounty") to the winner, the lower of (i) the winner's legal costs, OR the loser's legal costs x 2, plus (ii) loser must disclose the ultimate name of the beneficial owners (or material, if public) of the loser. EINs not allowed. The "trolls" are thus, branded. The next lawsuit ensues. During research, it is found that one of the parties is a known troll that has lost 1 prior case. Now the damages, should troll lose, are 2X of any settlement OR punitive amount. Should troll lose again, an extra 2x (total, 4x) gets applied on the punitive damage[1] to the troll and so on. If troll wins, his x is halved. This does 3 things: 1- Incentivize public to seek out weak patents, or trolls, for a payout. 2- Makes Trolling much harder at scale. 3- Ensures huge companies face risks if they throw their weight around. Bigco can afford $$ penalties vs small fish, but cannot afford to be tagged a 2-4x troll. It makes them an attractive target for bigger fish looking for the 2X or 4X reward challenge of Bigco patent portfolio.
  • notfed 3y ago
    > Domain names pay per year because there's an ongoing service attached. There's no such thing for patent Erm, what service? A record in a database? How's that different from a patent office? I guess there's fancy registrar website...to do what...help me pay my recurring bill?
    • IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
      I don't think you are arguing in good faith. OK fine want an ongoing patient fee ? Make it $9.99 per year just like a registrar, who gives you convenient ways to renew and pay fees from a working, modern site, and allow migration , with a few clicks. Is that going to prevent trolls ? Unequivocally, no. Parent was arguing for some ridiculous, unnecessary , tax. Then cited registrars as an example. My point, 1 gives a service, one does not. If you want to charge for a service, then make it transparent and make the fee reflect the service, not argue "hey we already charge for registrars" to make his/her point about a new, unecessary tax.
• atoav 3y ago
  Never used a fixed number for anything. Just tie it to a percentage of yearly revenue of the entity. This way you can ensure: - small companies and private people can afford patents - big corps do not get an advantage, in fact the bigger they get, the more expensive holding a patent becomes, ensuring they have to use those patents and not patent everything just because - number of patents any single entity can hold is limited, unless they want to go in debt for holding patents - there could still be a minimum yearly amount as proposed by you
  • thechao 3y ago
    Tie it to the expected value of the IP? If you think your idea is worth $1 billion, pay $10 million (1%) every year.
    • atoav 3y ago
      How often are you allowed to change this? Could just undervalue it until you suddenly don't. If you are not allowed to change it that is not an uninteresting idea.
  • ummonk 3y ago
    That just means patent trolls would split their patent portfolios into hundreds of holding companies. Also people would start filing bigger and bigger patents, stuffing more and more claims into a single patent.
    • atoav 3y ago
      Well this is a problem we need to tackle anyways. Splitting things into a thousand holding companies should be with considerable cost as well for those involved with a thousand holding companies. There is literally no case in which society profits from a corp being split up into a thousand holdings.
• yieldcrv 3y ago
  patent maintenance fees are already higher than that. amusing opinions that remind me not to trust them
• benlivengood 3y ago
  We need a fair-valuation tax; patents taxed yearly on their declared value and mandatory sale of the patent to anyone willing to pay the declared value. Some kind of deferred tax schedule (maybe 5-10 years?) for R&D.
• oezi 3y ago
  I would be in favor of a fee that is 1024 * 2^n USD where n is the nth year you want to keep the patent. 1st year = 2000 USD 10th year = 1m USD per year 20th year = 1bn USD per year It becomes prohibitively expensive if you don't use it. After 23 years it would make only sense for the most insane blockbuster drugs to keep going for another year.
• gunapologist99 3y ago
  Why would we tax that property (at the federal level) and not others? What would this do to people who file their own patents to protect their own inventions? Historically, that's been the vast bulk of all useful inventions in this country.
• tracerbulletx 3y ago
  I think a better model would just be something like adverse possession, where if the owner of the patent hasn't developed it, or done certain things it can be nullified.
• kstrauser 3y ago
  I offer as an alternative: IP is property, and it's taxed at the value you declare that it's worth. However, if you swear to the IRS that it's worth $500/yr, then you can't claim in court that a violation of it is costing you $10,000,000/yr in losses. That would be perjury. Your patent is worth $10,000,000? Awesome! I bet your local school district will love to hear how much you'll be paying in taxes on it.
  • EnigmaFlare 3y ago
    But property usually isn't taxed. Trading is. If you license a patent to someone else for $500/year, you'd pay tax on that $500. But if it's actually worth more, of course you wouldn't charge such a low fee.
    • kstrauser 3y ago
      To my knowledge, all US states have property tax.
    • eitland 3y ago
      That's the point up thread. It isn't now, but we could make it so.
    • thelastgallon 3y ago
      Property is almost always taxed. In Texas, property taxes on homes are 2.5 - 3% of value, most people pay between 8K - 30K every year. And this keeps going up! Over a 30 year mortgage, I'm sure most people pay more on property taxes than on their home. Approximately 50% of property taxes go to school districts, the rest for other municipal services. Some states also tax car as property. What is not taxed is Intellectual Property. Because it is almost completely owned by the super rich. And, of course, these billionaires need all the help they can get. How about we change this? We can think of wiping out property taxes for homeowners (making homes affordable) and fund education from patent taxes. After all, the super rich are deriving these patents from the education system, its only fair they pay their fair share.
      • 3y ago
• balderdash 3y ago
  I generally think the principal of taxing property is fundamentally flawed (especially as it relates to property that has a market value that can be quite volatile or hard to value and even more so if the property generates no current income). My rationale is that it means that only people that are rich can own property as they can afford the taxes, and especially if the property has increased in value over time and has no or small associated cash flows. By all means tax gains on realization (though I’d argue there should be a CPI adjustment to the basis but that’s another conversation)