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Companies Asked to Donate Unused Patents
Radon360 writes "There are countless patents that are promising but sitting idle, stowed in the corporate file room. In fact, about 90 percent to 95 percent of all patents are idle. Countless patents sit unused when companies decide not to develop them into products. Now, not-for-profit groups and state governments are asking companies to donate dormant patents so they can be passed to local entrepreneurs who try to build businesses out of them. "
The whole goal of filing tons of patents you won't develop is to wait for someone else to do the work for you. If you donate the patent someone else will complete the work but you won't get to capitalize on their success. (as was I'm sure the original goal)
If companies would be interested in doing something with the patents they could have enter sharing agreements with anybody willing, so they would split the money between the owner of the patent and the entity that actually does the work of implementing the patent.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
This is good. I was wondering what I was gonna do with my peanut-butter-powered horse launcher.
Table-ized A.I.
Take an old, dusty patent that isn't doing anyone any harm, and then give it to an entrepreneur who now has an incentive to sue anyone else whose product violates the patent.
The only reason it's possible to do business in the United States at all is because 90% of patents are left lying in a drawer rather than being rigorously enforced.
Bury them. Let them rest in peace.
Perhaps giving companies a tax writeoff equal to the amount in revenues that a donated patent generates would work out.
Not going to happen. Companies are greedier than individuals despite being comprised of them.
Question everything
Wouldn't it be a lot simpler to make patents only valid while the holder is actively exploiting them (ie using them to build the device in question - filing suits against anyone that looks like they might be using it shouldn't count) - allow a 3 year grace period between filing the patent and when they first start using it to cover developement to market window
$_="Slashdotter";$syn="OTT";s;..;;;sub _{print shift||$_};s!ash!Perl !;s=$syn=ack=i;tr+LLEd+BLAH+;_"Just Another ";_
Many companies use patents defensively (or counter offensively). The company will patent technology or process X, though they may decide that it is better done internally with process Y. Or they may simply make the strategic decision that the effort and resources expended in pursuing profit in the patent are better spent pursuing something else. Nevertheless, the patent still has value to them because it gives them more options.
1. It helps deter competitors from launching patent infringement lawsuits against them, because they have patents that can be used in a counter suit.
2. It prevents competitors from utilizing the technology that they developed.
3. It gives them business options that they would not otherwise have if they didn't have the rights to the patent.
I doubt that most patents that are classified as being "unused" or "sitting around" still aren't providing some kind of value to the company that pursued them in the first place. It tends to be the nature of business that companies will look for ways to leverage their assets maximally. Besides, if the patents were valuable, the company would already have pursued licensing the technology to another person/company who can develop it into something viable.
120 characters isn't enough to explain it.
Companies are going to give up patents, without wanting something in return? The reason they took out the patent in the first place is $$$.
I understand the underlying idea, if a company owns a patent which it can't use because it wouldn't be profitable, a non-profit organisation would be able to use the patent and create something useful out of it.
But let's face it, a company won't give up a patent just because it isn't profitable today... Who knows what happen tomorrow, making their patent profitable after all!
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Why not have some sort of mechanism for releasing unused patents completely into the public domain after they idle for a certain amount of years? Wouldn't some sort of "use it or lose it" clause be in the best interests of everyone who isn't a lazy patent-trolling bastard?
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
"We donated the patent based under the assumption that it was worthless. Now that it isn't, we would like to have it back please." *waves DMCA around out of ignorance* Thats exactly what charities needs to go with all of the useless junk in their second-hand stores. Second-hand patents!
...
I cant see any company giving up the opportunity to make money. Surely they would just employ the person after the patent to realise their own idea?
Perhaps patents should have a shelf life. If its dormant for more than X amount of years, its dropped.
Biomech
*hilariously, goes and plays a pinball machine called 'Devil's Advocate'*
Ah, those Simpsons. Anyway, problem:
Those patents gathering dust are DEFENSIVE patents. That's why they're gathering dust; they're the deterrent your company has just in case anyone starts violating the patent sharing agreements that prevail between the big players in many markets.
If you donate them to other institutions, they 1) are no longer a deterrent and 2) may no longer be covered by patent sharing agreements. Congratulations! You have plunged the world into an era of 0 technological progress, as companies find the existing patent detente is no longer enforceable.
It would be better to simply grant every company ever a patent on everything possi -- oh, wait, that is the USPTO's actual strategy.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Patents are only rights to exclude others from doing something (namely what is claimed by the patent). "Donating" a patent to someone is therefore very unlikely to help someone build a business around it, unless that business is threatening to sue the hell out of everyone else who has ignored that patent until now (because the owner clearly decided not to enforce it). The reason is that it almost never happens that a product is only covered by a single (or even a couple of) patents, except sometimes with pharmaceuticals or so (but those patents are very unlikely to be dormant).
Donate free food here
This is part of the patent system that is broken. There is no incentive to not squat on the patent and wait for someone else to do the work. Invalidating the unused patents and passing them to the public domain will increase (IMO) the ability of small and agile businesses to do something with the previously patented item. When it passes to public domain, it removes the ability of anyone to use it just for suing others.
If the patent is not being used, it doesn't need patent protection! The grace period length may be up for debate, but the idea of passing the invention to public domain should not be in the case of unused patents.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
...would be the first business method coming to mind.
Wouter.
Now you too can sue for a living.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
I think the whole patent system is a mess at the moment. There are too many companies grabbing technologies that have been around for ages.
Anyone remember when microsoft patented a whitespace remover!?
I propose we coin this "Pat-Squatting", although some people might hear something nasty in that.
for sale
I'm a self-modifying sig virus
I've often wondered whether patents could be subject to a type of perpetual public auction in which anyone can make a binding bid on a patent. The price on the patent would be part of a delayed mark-to-market capital gains tax accounting system that would encourage companies to either monetize or sell patents because they would be paying taxes on those patents. Some small entrepreneurs might be "forced" to sell their patents (i.e., they owe the IRS $2,000,000 because they got a bid for $10,000,000), but then they'd get far more money from the high bidder than they could have if they kept the patent. High bidders would, in turn, have serious skin in the game and want to make money from the patent. Patent-horders would need to pay the gains taxes on their patent portfolios as if those patents where being economically used. I suspect the scheme would make it more costly to keep frivolous patents or to sit on a patent to prevent competitive innovation.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Does this mean I can patent the ellusive quad-linked list?
-50 DKP for lame post!
...intended to circumvent patent trolls.
What's the point of getting a patent to keep people from being able to extort you, then give the patent away?
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
I have anti-patented my two algorithms - Hyperluma 2 and Luminaplex http://ronja.twibright.com/hyperluma.php - which, when implemented, mean better television, better DVDs, better porn videos for everyone. They are actually improvements over a method that solved the same problem with worse quality and was patented.
:)
So in this case I donated an anti-patent and not a patent, and not to some enterpreneur, but to the public
The law mus state that, after a patent has been granted, the patent holder has 3 years to use it. If it doesn't, the patent becomes void.
What good is a submarine if everyone can see where it is?
The USPTO charges maintenance fees on patents. If you do not pony up $$$$ every few years the patent expires. Companies not being in the business of expending cash needlessly do not pay the fees on patents they own but have no interest in develeping. Ultimately this means there will be very few active but available patents to donate to such organizations. In fact the whole premise of the article is nonsense.
The patent was never perfect but the principal and general application was sound. It allowed for actual innovation, protected it temporarily, and offered some transparency in the business world to value novel ideas.
The problem with the libertarian black-or-white view of marketplaces is that humans _always_ screw it up. Not sometimes, always. I imagine the number of people that screwed this one up is relatively small, but isn't it always the few who make misery for the rest.
History shows time and again that all unregulated markets mature to monopolies. From fish mongers to real estate agents, there's rarely an exception. The libertarian view then either accepts the monopoly or performs some logical gymnastics to allow regulation.
The libertarian ideal _will_ be as abused as every other political ideal that has come before it. Please consider a more moderate approach.
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1989 patent, slightly used, one owner, last used 1992, $500K or best offer.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Wouldn't it be a lot simpler to make patents only valid while the holder is actively exploiting them
EXACTLY. How terribly naive to think that those companies that own many "stale patents" would donate their "valuable IP". Those who are truly interested in innovation rather than exploitation will make the effort to get the invention to market (either themselves or through actively pursuing licensing agreements with those that have the capital to do so). Those companies that are NOT interested in bringing the patented idea to market and are not evil parasites are already donating such patents to others (IBM for example).
All that are left are evil, parasitic submarine-patent holding companies. Such companies exist solely to make money without making an effort by holding innovation hostage. Such companies will not donate their IP simply by asking them politely. As you have suggested and I've advocated for quite some time, this illegitimate business model has to be outlawed in some way, and the best way to do this is to introduce the obligation to provide not only the description of the invention itself but an execution/delivery plan as well that describes the intended plan to bring the patented invention to market. The patent holder would be held to that plan, up to a maximum-allowable period of time (whichever is shorter). If the patent holder fails to deliver the patent would be permanently invalidated and the idea would be public domain.
Though much more patent reform is required, this single change would be a big step forward. Amazon may have been evil to file their stupid "one-click-online-purchase" patent but at least they actually brought the idea to reality. Submarine patents run completely counter to the spirit and purpose of patent law, are potentially damaging to the economy and global competitiveness of a nation and must be eliminated.
If the whole point is to do some good, why not open the patents to everybody instead of picking some small likely-to-fail company? And while they're failing, nobody else can use the ideas. Not cool.
This article looked much more interesting when I thought it said "Companies Asked to Donate Unused Pants."
I think I'm starting to see how patenting spurs progress rather than hinders it.
Without the incentive patents provide, theese ideas may never have left the heads of the inventors.
They might be untouchable right now, but at least they're on the table, like cornbread & cookies.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Suuuuure they will. This should have been classified as 'its funny, laugh'.
... don't hold your breath.
Could companies be more open with them, sure, but *donate*
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The legislator decidend at tha time that it was not a good thing for the common welfare to leave a patentable idea unused inside a drawer. So use it or lend it back to its first owner, who can immediately do whatever he wants with it, including selling it to any other company or using it by himself.
This excellent disposition is jeopardized by a trend for european unification of the patent process, which would be a shame for mankind.
Signature omitted in order to save space. Thanks for your understanding.
Remember, everyone needs a war chest of patents to cross-license to other companies. And nobody knows for sure which patents might become useful in the future (no matter how useless they might seem today). Therefore, everything gets renewed. Also, I suspect the non-renewal of a patent would trigger the immediate write-off of all research done to acquire it. There might be some tax benefit, but somebody's internal budget is going to clobbered with accelerated depreciation expense.
If companies don't pay maintenance fees on a patent it will become abandoned, and thus (after a grace period) public domain.
.. like .. show me all the patents with 'cel phone' in the title that are abandoned.
Patents that are expired, (17-20 years) are of course already thus.
Try searching on http://www.patentmonkey.com/ and the results will show you status. Roumour has it that just 10 minutes ago they fixed it so you can even be able to SEARCH on status
While you are there, you can browse patents by front page - as if you were in the patent office in VA too.
All food for the entrepreneur.
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
In truth, the stealth patent strategy is only used by a tiny minority of vultures. The vast magority of companies (eg. IBM,HP) use them to get into cross-licence agreements, or use them as ammunition to defend against lawsuits. In the industry, patents are almost never used to "protect" invenstions, but only to protect against lawsuits. So in that way, no patent goes unused.
Patents are a form of (intelectual) property. Asking companies to donate patents would be like asking landowners to donate their unworked land, with the only difference that patents will expire some day. What could be done though would be to impose heavy fees on companies for unused patents.
Companies asked to donate unused dollars.
Like that will happen
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
It is very unrealistic to assume that companies will donate their patents on plea. An unused patent is a potential goldmine if the company uses it very well and a legal landmine for those who infringe upon it.
My idea would be to change patent laws so that patents *can't* be traded. Keep the right to use and license the patent, but the patent should expire once the patent-holding entity (individual, group, or corporation) expires (for individuals the date would be x years (# of years up to debate) or the day they die, whichever comes later). In the case of a corporation, the day they hit outright bankruptcy (no way out) should be considered the expiration date. At that point, the patent should become public-domain, free-to-be used by all (the government holding the patent in trust for the people so that they all have equal access to it).
It seems extreme but considering it in the light of present events, it is much fairer. Considering that most *contentious* patent litigation are started by organizations that buy patents from others, this idea would end that completely (if enforced properly). It also guaranteees the patent-holder a lifetime to enjoy the potential benefits from patent.
Again, this is just an idea, but it considers the usefulness and value over time of a given invention.
Don't worry, I've got step three all figured out: Step 3: ???
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Hahah... Donate? Let other people make profit from? haha. That's a good one. Very funny! No company anywhere just gives up something that can still be used to make profit.
If you were offended by anything I said... No, I'm not sorry. Please lighten up.
http://www.theautochannel.com/news/2005/02/25/0053 98.html
That's the guy who came up with intermittent windshield wipers. The specifics of which, I have issue with, but the basic principal is sound.
I'm an inventor who comes up with a great idea. I patent it, then I shop it to companies who would likely use it to gain an advantage. The company can examine the novel idea in detail and the inventor is protected from wholesale theft and place a value on the idea. If the inventor and business agree on some terms, then both parties benefit.
The process is hampered by human organization mantras like "not invented here." At this point in time, the whole patent process is completely out of control so any semblance to the original notions are a long way gone.
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As has already been pointed out, companies who don't want their patents can just fail to pay maintenance fees. These are normally due at 3.5, 7.5, and 11.5 years from the date of issue. Also, companies will never do this if there's money to be made. It costs nothing to sit on a patent that might eventually turn into license revenue, but you give up that potential revenue by making a donation. The only conceivable reason a company might do this would be as a tax write-off, which saves them money. Of course, it probably isn't enough to justify the initial investment in obtaining the patent in the first place...
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
...I want to reclaim a donation?
I have a standing social contract, to donate CPU cycles, physical labor, and such to good causes.
The patent idea sounds good, but, because its an on-going giver, what if I want to reclaim it later? There are a host of reasons why I would do it:
Why not donate license to the idea without giving over the entire patent?
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Patents hinder innovation?
I think the word you are looking for is competition.
As far as I'm concerned patents help innovate and create a new product, but limit the amount of people who can use the idea/process/concept. Not having a patent system at all would decrease the amount of innovation. Think about it, who would want to spend X million dollars on R&D if someone can just rip off the whole entire process from the original creator.
However, coming up with a system that still gives the original inventor some incentive to innovate (probably some monetary compensation from those who use it) as well as letting other companies/entities/people use the "patent" could spur much more competition.
And I think we can all agree that more competition is a good thing for consumers and bad thing for producers.
And thus, businesses will not abandon the patent system.
This is like my lawyer begging a street-bum for permission to let me wash my car. Really, here's why this is a good analogy: So patent-holders are like the bums that wash my car windows at a stoplight, and then demand payment for their work. If they had gotten my consent prior to doing the work, then it would make sense for me to have to pay for it. Of course it's not reasonable for a company to get consent from every interested party before doing some research, so that's where the government comes in, and hands out consent on behalf of everyone for a company to own an idea if they do the work. So if the government represents us (in theory anyway), then now they're turning to the bums and begging for permission on our behalf so that we can get our windows washed elsewhere. Man, this patent thing is really getting weird!
Instead of giving the patents to not-for-profit groups, whic hare just going to let them sit idle as Cash Cows, and entrepeneurs who are going to use them in a way that still stifles innovation, why not put them in a giant "pool", where anybody can use them, royalty-free, and not have to worry about "patent infringement" and stifled innovation?
If the patents are put into a pool, then they can be patents "in the name or business" where nobody has to worry about their idea being infringed on, or infringing on other. Basically, the general public would be the patent-holders, and therefore, anybody could use the technology. Since the patents still exist, the technology could not be restricetd BY ANYONE, including not-for-profit groups.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
If the owner of a patent hasn't started to develop it or make it available for licensing within 2 years of a patent being awarded, it should be made available for mandatory licensing with set compensation to the owner.
The inventors of the US patent system didn't envision idle or submarine patents. Their intent was to encourage the creation of useful devices that would actually be made available to the public in exchange for the temporary monopoly on profiting from that invention. Having 95% of all patents idle doesn't fit the original intent.
Tech Public Policy stuff
So they will assign some crazy million dollar value to these and donate them so they can write it off of taxes. Then they won't have to worry about donating real money to a real charity.
1) Patent lots of random, inane things
2) Donate them all for tax break
3) Profit??
See my comment here:
http://journalism.berkeley.edu/projects/biplog/arc hive/000431.html
It may prove difficult in the short term to reduce the term of copyrights which have already been extended. Also, the forces pushing perpetual copyright are strong. However, there is another route, which may be easier, employing the concepts of Aikido -- moving with the strong force and redirecting it in a better way. Rather than fight to reduce the maximum term of copyrights, consider that existing and future copyrights could be taxed annually just like real estate as long as they are kept from the public domain. This uses a market-based approach to limit the external costs of copyright monopolies.
What is the social justification for such a tax?
Real property taxes are justified by the notion that real estate imposes a cost on society -- for fire departments, police departments, schools, roads, sewers, water pipelines, libraries, town courts, property record archives, and so forth.
Copyrights were originally monopolies granted "for a limited time" with the notion that the costs they imposed on society would be repaid by the work moving into the public domain after that limited time. That bargain has effectively been broken because the terms are so long (and likely will be in perpetuity in the U.S.A. given the recent Supreme Court decision). Yet, copyrights still pose a cost on society. There must be courts to dispute them, police to enforce them. There must be prisons to hold the millions of copyright offenders. Like no one in the 1960s would imagine a million U.S. citizens behind bars for non-violent drug offenses in the 1990s, it is possible that there may be a million U.S. citizens behind bars in the 2010s for copyright violations as the "War on Those Who Share" gets underway. There must be an information superhighway to transport these works, and standards for disseminating them. Authors of derivative works must spend time researching whether a work is already in the public domain, or locating all the related rights holders if it is not. Extensions of the principle of copyright to cover the ideas in the work such as characters or plot lines or other structures make it ever more costly to create new non-infringing works. Many new or derived works are not created because of these chilling effects, which is a hidden cost of copyrights. People in developing nations or others who cannot pay use fees for copyrighted works are deprived of education or enjoyment when such a deprivation does not directly benefit anyone. So, given all these indirect costs of granting copyright monopolies, society is justified in imposing a financial cost on copyright holders to rebalance the copyright bargain.
Real estate is typically taxed at a small percentage of an assessed value. If the taxes are not paid, the real estate essentially becomes owned by society. Note that these annual property taxes are in addition to any fees for recording deed transfers, liens, title searches, and such.
Since it is difficult to value a copyright, one possibility to determine the value of a copyright is to let copyright holders assess themselves how much it is worth it to them to keep their work out of the public domain. Then the rights holder would pay annually a small percentage of this value (perhaps three to five percent). Each year, when the rights holder sent in their tax, the rights holder could change this self-assessed value to reflect their changing priorities and a changing market. If the rights holder did not pay the tax, then the work would move immediately into the public domain. If someone wanted that work in the public domain, they could pay the copyright holder the self-assessed amount and the work would then immediately be moved into the public domain. This public domain buyout possibility serves to limit the tendency of rights holders to produce low self-assessments to minimize their annual tax
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Good grief, the intermittent windshield patent is hardly a shining example of "an invention that greatly benefited society but could only have been created by that single talented inventor".
i g-company scenario is? As far as I can tell, it's MUCH more likely that a big company is going to use their patent portfolio to crush any up-and-coming competitors before they can get a foothold in the market.
People just like that story because it shows a little guy putting one over on the big guys, but it hardly shows anything "innovative" - once the automakers figured out that it was a desirable feature, it wouldn't have taken more than a day or two for one of their engineers to come up with something that did the job. Unfortunately, these kinds of mindless little concepts seem to be more the rule than the exception in the patent system.
Besides, how likely do you think the little-inventor-uses-patents-to-win-against-the-b
There is a reason the patents have been sitting on the shelves of corporations doing nothing....they have no value. So, the tax payers will pay to have them reviewed by state governments only to find out that they have no commercial value...that entrepreneurs have no interest in them? Just another way to grow the size of government.
That seems like a bad idea to me, for a very simple reason.
Think about it: companies are, first and foremost, interested in making money. Some may have ethical goals or values, too (let's call these "the good guys"), while others don't and care ONLY about money (the "bad guys"). Now, what kind of company would donate a patent they held?
Obviously, the bad guys wouldn't do it; after all, a patent, even if you're not using it right now and have no current plans to do so in the future, might still be valuable at some point, and giving up that value for nothing is a bad deal. The good guys, on the other hand, might do it - depending, of course, but in principle, they might.
If a patent gets donated, what happens? Either someone picks it up and creates a successful business, or it turns out to be a dud. In the latter case, the whole act of donating it was pretty useless, but since that's not what's supposed to happen, let's concentrate on the first case: here, someone actually demonstrates that there WAS more than just a theoretical value attached to the patent, so the company that donated it did lose REAL money when it did so.
Now think about that: the bad guys (who didn't donate anything) continued as usual, and the good guys, *by virtue of being good guys*, *lost money*. Therefore, this scheme is either useless (if the donated patents aren't useful for creating new businesses) or hurts the good guys and rewards the greedy.
butter the donkey