3 ms·

Maybe when you file the patent, you have to submit an anticipated value statement and you are taxed some % / year on that anticipated value. If somebody violate

Maybe when you file the patent, you have to submit an anticipated value statement and you are taxed some % / year on that anticipated value. If somebody violates the patent, you can sue them for up to the amount you anticipated, but not more. In the future you can amend the value claim, but you can only adjust it down.

echelon 3y ago
That's awful for protecting innovation. You don't know the market value of each individual invention with that level of granularity. Companies and researchers should be free to patent to protect themselves, but patent trolls with no clear technological development (no lab, no product, no licensing+developing) should be stopped. It seems easy to me to draw a bounding box around these behaviors with a simple test. Perhaps like a Howey test [1], but for patent trolling. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEC_v._W._J._Howey_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEC_v._W._J._Howey_Co.
victorbjorklund 3y ago
So someone inventing something for say mobile phones in the 80s that is still used would have estimated their patentent to not be so useful because the number of mobile phones wasnt that high. And if Apple violated their patent they would just pay pennies because of that? It is extremly hard to estimate the worth of a tech 30 years into the future invented today. Take a tech invented today and tell me what the market value will be in 30 years and how sure you are about that predicition.
- criddell 3y ago
  Yeah, that’s roughly how it would work, except 30 years feels way too long. If other people are better than you at seeing what some technology could be used for it, then maybe we should lower the barriers for those people. The whole point of the patent system should be to provide the greatest benefit to the greatest number of people.
- petsfed 3y ago
  If you invented and patented something in the US in 1989, you'd have protections until 2009 at the latest. If it wasn't usable until 2013, then that sucks for you, but it is what it is. Your invention doesn't get 20 guaranteed years of profitability. You get 20 years to figure out how to make it profitable. The two are very different concepts. edit: this is why you don't patent every damned thing, just the things that you believe will be profitable over the next 20 years. Otherwise, the cost of researching and filing the patent, as well as maintaining it, may well exceed whatever profit you actually get from the thing.
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    > this is why you don't patent every damned thing, just the things that you believe will be profitable over the next 20 years Unless you work for a corporation, that owns your intellectual output anyway, and encourages you to submit forms for anything that looks even remotely patentable.
    - petsfed 3y ago
      I want to be clear here: you submit a form for everything, then people in the legal and business development teams decide if its actually worth patenting. But even then, if you devise some thing that will be very useful if we ever get teleportation working, your employer may still not patent it, if they believe that teleportation is more than 20 years away.

echelon 3y ago

That's awful for protecting innovation. You don't know the market value of each individual invention with that level of granularity. Companies and researchers should be free to patent to protect themselves, but patent trolls with no clear technological development (no lab, no product, no licensing+developing) should be stopped. It seems easy to me to draw a bounding box around these behaviors with a simple test. Perhaps like a Howey test [1], but for patent trolling. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEC_v._W._J._Howey_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEC_v._W._J._Howey_Co.

victorbjorklund 3y ago

So someone inventing something for say mobile phones in the 80s that is still used would have estimated their patentent to not be so useful because the number of mobile phones wasnt that high. And if Apple violated their patent they would just pay pennies because of that? It is extremly hard to estimate the worth of a tech 30 years into the future invented today. Take a tech invented today and tell me what the market value will be in 30 years and how sure you are about that predicition.

criddell 3y ago
Yeah, that’s roughly how it would work, except 30 years feels way too long. If other people are better than you at seeing what some technology could be used for it, then maybe we should lower the barriers for those people. The whole point of the patent system should be to provide the greatest benefit to the greatest number of people.
petsfed 3y ago
If you invented and patented something in the US in 1989, you'd have protections until 2009 at the latest. If it wasn't usable until 2013, then that sucks for you, but it is what it is. Your invention doesn't get 20 guaranteed years of profitability. You get 20 years to figure out how to make it profitable. The two are very different concepts. edit: this is why you don't patent every damned thing, just the things that you believe will be profitable over the next 20 years. Otherwise, the cost of researching and filing the patent, as well as maintaining it, may well exceed whatever profit you actually get from the thing.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  > this is why you don't patent every damned thing, just the things that you believe will be profitable over the next 20 years Unless you work for a corporation, that owns your intellectual output anyway, and encourages you to submit forms for anything that looks even remotely patentable.
  - petsfed 3y ago
    I want to be clear here: you submit a form for everything, then people in the legal and business development teams decide if its actually worth patenting. But even then, if you devise some thing that will be very useful if we ever get teleportation working, your employer may still not patent it, if they believe that teleportation is more than 20 years away.