[eli_gottlieb]

>Not sure the government should be involved. Not because basic research ain't great---in an ideal world we'd all get ponies from the government---but because budgets are finite and there are other opportunities some of them with more definite benefits.

Budgets are finite, but currently, the state leaves both money and economic legibility on the table. The simple system should be: if you build and commercialize technology based on a public research grant, the state owns the patent and can set a fixed licensing rate proportional to the amount of the original grant funding. The state then splits the royalties, with you the developer taking most of them, but some large portion poured back into public research budgets (including from money you make off the patent). As your patent term expires, it begins costing you progressively larger portions of royalties and revenues to renew it.

Eventually, the knowledge you documented to get the patent becomes public domain, or the state basically takes all the revenue from renewed patents.

This doesn't just make money for the public research system, it guarantees legible terms to prospective licensees and rules out patent trolling wholesale.

[fjsolwmv]

How about the government just taxes all income at some appropriate rate?

[eli_gottlieb]

Personally, I really think that fundamental R&D is too important to rely on Congressional or parliamentary largess. If we want to fund research, and hopefully we do, then I think we ought to fund it out of direct taxes on its own products, a direct economic contract that knowledge belongs to everyone.