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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. "
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.
Perhaps giving companies a tax writeoff equal to the amount in revenues that a donated patent generates would work out.
The original article mentions that tax breaks were actually stopped because they were abused.