I understand and agree with your desire to have more public as opposed to private benefit from IP, but don't forget that inventions do not come about just because of a public education system. By which I mean to say that inventors contribute something that is truly theirs and was not there already somehow in the public domain. True inventions and innovation require a serious effort for which the inventor wants to be rewarded (why put in the effort otherwise ?).
In your system it doesn't matter if you're putting in tons of work to create your inventions or whether you're near to copying someone else's work. Hence, in your system great inventions that require a lot of sweat will occur less.
In addition, some inventions require a longer time before becoming profitable. In your system, if your invention doesn't pay off within the timeschedule set by the increasing fees structure, you might as well forget about it. This is totally unattractive for any entrepreneur.
Last but not least you shouldn't forget that where you want to go with your proposal is so radically different from where we are now (ie. too much private benefit from a publicly granted privilege), that it would never pass any legislative council that is lobbied by private interests (especially in the US).
I don't think it matters whether you can patent after your idea becomes public or not. if you want to have a patent that can hold up in court if it gets challenged it will always be better to have more evidence that the patent actually works eg. through prototyping etc.. hence if you obtain your patent at a stage where it's more of an idea then you are also entitled to less of a reward since there was less effort involved in getting the patent.
I'm sticking with the basic idea that effort has to be reflected in any reward or privilege you get from society. This notion of an idea being worth something has been completely overblown and is now resulting in the limitation of free speech. It's very simply the direct consequence of the fact that effort is not one of the items that need to be shown or proven to the patent examinators.
As I tried to explain in my previous reply to you, I'm explicitly not suggesting that better bookkeeping will help. It's merely a tactic to limit how patents can be exploited, by requiring people to show how much they sweat to contribute something truly new to society.
I definitely don't believe in better patent examination because it's prone to heavy bias. Who appoints these examinators and who's to say they aren't bought ? From my experience in the academic world it's rife with politics in these so-called expert groups and I would most certainly contend that it's often not the most smart minds that get the most influential positions, deciding where R&D money gets spent. Peer review is very difficult to keep objective because in these expert groups everyone knows everyone and more often than not one will be biased towards results of a friend. In the case of patent examiners it will be worse because it's just a job (there's not much reputation at stake because it compares to the job of a scientific reviewer who really doesn't get much credit for his job).
If you'd couple the fee structure to the original investment (as per my original idea) perhaps it could make sense, because how would you determine the amount of the fees otherwise ? Ie., the idea would be that if you want to claim more investment with your patent because you think it's gonna pay back big time, then expect to pay more fees as well or abandon it and make it public domain.
I'm not sure though that it would make business sense to obtain a patent since you'd be charged ever increasing fees even if you don't make any profit from your invention. This might be too much of a deterrent for many entrepreneurs in terms of risk-taking.
Look at it from a different perspective, not from the bookkeeper's POV. Documenting the investment serves two purposes:
1. Right now, the patent process is too easily abused for business purposes, eg. to obtain a monopoly, because the intellectual claims can only be checked by very few experts (if they are checked or contested at all). Requiring the investment to be documented will make it much easier to contest a patent and hence diminish the facility of obtaining it.
It is also a deterrent for anyone not wanting to be transparent with their books. Just like with your tax claim, if you want tax credits you need to be rather transparent with your books. Given that you're obtaining a privilege from the government you should be required to have transparent bookkeeping. This will weed out all the folks who think a patent is an easy way to obtain a monopoly, protected by the government, without having to surrender anything about their business.
2. Even if a company would exaggerate its investment, the main objective of investment documentation is to limit how much can be earned from a patent not just by limiting the duration of a patent but by also limiting the actual $$ amount. Also, if a company exaggerates its investment for a certain patent, it cannot keep on exaggerating for all its patents since it will have to match total expenses. In any event, bad bookkeeping practice will quite quickly be contested in courts.
Finally, I don't see why development once the invention has been patented should be included. That's just part of commercialization. Certainly marketing and QA is part of commercialization and has nothing to do with creating the original IP. The idea of awarding a patent is to allow the inventor to commercially benefit from the invention. Once the patent is awarded there is every opportunity to do so.
I would like some comments on this idea:
Since IP is a business concept, treat it in that way: exclusive IP rights should only be granted until profits made from the IP reach a fixed number (set through political process) times the investment that was required to create the invention claimed as IP. Once those profits have been obtained, the IP should become public domain. In addition to the currently required documentation about the invention and its claims, a deposition about the investment should be made at the time the IP rights are requested and controlled by an independent accountant. Profits can be tracked through income tax returns or will have to be administered separately.
This way, anyone wanting to contest the IP rights can do so not only wrt. content but also wrt. investment. This method secures that eg. pharmaceutical companies get their huge investments back for developing new medecines but also secures that eg. existing natural species or commonly used phrases or code chunks cannot be patented.
There should be an incentive to invent and innovate but the incentive must relate to the effort required to create the invention. I don't believe that any invention occurred without effort.
Slashdot Mirror
I understand and agree with your desire to have more public as opposed to private benefit from IP, but don't forget that inventions do not come about just because of a public education system. By which I mean to say that inventors contribute something that is truly theirs and was not there already somehow in the public domain. True inventions and innovation require a serious effort for which the inventor wants to be rewarded (why put in the effort otherwise ?).
In your system it doesn't matter if you're putting in tons of work to create your inventions or whether you're near to copying someone else's work. Hence, in your system great inventions that require a lot of sweat will occur less.
In addition, some inventions require a longer time before becoming profitable. In your system, if your invention doesn't pay off within the timeschedule set by the increasing fees structure, you might as well forget about it. This is totally unattractive for any entrepreneur.
Last but not least you shouldn't forget that where you want to go with your proposal is so radically different from where we are now (ie. too much private benefit from a publicly granted privilege), that it would never pass any legislative council that is lobbied by private interests (especially in the US).
I'm a Dutchman in Canada, fyi.
I don't think it matters whether you can patent after your idea becomes public or not. if you want to have a patent that can hold up in court if it gets challenged it will always be better to have more evidence that the patent actually works eg. through prototyping etc.. hence if you obtain your patent at a stage where it's more of an idea then you are also entitled to less of a reward since there was less effort involved in getting the patent.
I'm sticking with the basic idea that effort has to be reflected in any reward or privilege you get from society. This notion of an idea being worth something has been completely overblown and is now resulting in the limitation of free speech. It's very simply the direct consequence of the fact that effort is not one of the items that need to be shown or proven to the patent examinators.
As I tried to explain in my previous reply to you, I'm explicitly not suggesting that better bookkeeping will help. It's merely a tactic to limit how patents can be exploited, by requiring people to show how much they sweat to contribute something truly new to society.
I definitely don't believe in better patent examination because it's prone to heavy bias. Who appoints these examinators and who's to say they aren't bought ? From my experience in the academic world it's rife with politics in these so-called expert groups and I would most certainly contend that it's often not the most smart minds that get the most influential positions, deciding where R&D money gets spent. Peer review is very difficult to keep objective because in these expert groups everyone knows everyone and more often than not one will be biased towards results of a friend. In the case of patent examiners it will be worse because it's just a job (there's not much reputation at stake because it compares to the job of a scientific reviewer who really doesn't get much credit for his job).
If you'd couple the fee structure to the original investment (as per my original idea) perhaps it could make sense, because how would you determine the amount of the fees otherwise ? Ie., the idea would be that if you want to claim more investment with your patent because you think it's gonna pay back big time, then expect to pay more fees as well or abandon it and make it public domain.
I'm not sure though that it would make business sense to obtain a patent since you'd be charged ever increasing fees even if you don't make any profit from your invention. This might be too much of a deterrent for many entrepreneurs in terms of risk-taking.
Look at it from a different perspective, not from the bookkeeper's POV. Documenting the investment serves two purposes: 1. Right now, the patent process is too easily abused for business purposes, eg. to obtain a monopoly, because the intellectual claims can only be checked by very few experts (if they are checked or contested at all). Requiring the investment to be documented will make it much easier to contest a patent and hence diminish the facility of obtaining it. It is also a deterrent for anyone not wanting to be transparent with their books. Just like with your tax claim, if you want tax credits you need to be rather transparent with your books. Given that you're obtaining a privilege from the government you should be required to have transparent bookkeeping. This will weed out all the folks who think a patent is an easy way to obtain a monopoly, protected by the government, without having to surrender anything about their business. 2. Even if a company would exaggerate its investment, the main objective of investment documentation is to limit how much can be earned from a patent not just by limiting the duration of a patent but by also limiting the actual $$ amount. Also, if a company exaggerates its investment for a certain patent, it cannot keep on exaggerating for all its patents since it will have to match total expenses. In any event, bad bookkeeping practice will quite quickly be contested in courts. Finally, I don't see why development once the invention has been patented should be included. That's just part of commercialization. Certainly marketing and QA is part of commercialization and has nothing to do with creating the original IP. The idea of awarding a patent is to allow the inventor to commercially benefit from the invention. Once the patent is awarded there is every opportunity to do so.
I would like some comments on this idea: Since IP is a business concept, treat it in that way: exclusive IP rights should only be granted until profits made from the IP reach a fixed number (set through political process) times the investment that was required to create the invention claimed as IP. Once those profits have been obtained, the IP should become public domain. In addition to the currently required documentation about the invention and its claims, a deposition about the investment should be made at the time the IP rights are requested and controlled by an independent accountant. Profits can be tracked through income tax returns or will have to be administered separately. This way, anyone wanting to contest the IP rights can do so not only wrt. content but also wrt. investment. This method secures that eg. pharmaceutical companies get their huge investments back for developing new medecines but also secures that eg. existing natural species or commonly used phrases or code chunks cannot be patented. There should be an incentive to invent and innovate but the incentive must relate to the effort required to create the invention. I don't believe that any invention occurred without effort.