[oezi]

And this is why patent duration should be tied to product lifecycle length. Pharma where you need 10 years to pull off clinical trials could keep 23 years, but consumer hardware where new generation of devices launch within 2 years should be limited to 10 years. Software should likely be limited to 5 years.

[MontyCarloHall]

Alternatively, make the cost to renew a patent each year increase exponentially, with the base proportional to the worth of the individual/company filing the patent at the time of filing.

That ties the duration of a patent directly to how much value it provides to the company over time, which is the rationale for having patents in the first place. A company could only afford to hold onto a patent for as long as it causes the company’s revenue to grow exponentially. Once the patented technology matures and growth plateaus, keeping the patent would become prohibitively expensive. This would completely eliminate patent trolls and patent squatting/speculative patents.

[robocat]

> That ties the duration of a patent directly to how much value it provides to the company over time

Actually I think that idea causes the opposite of what is wanted.

A high value monopoly patent will stay locked up for a long time, well after the development costs and risk have been paid off. The consumer is paying high economic rent and the product has less supply.

A low value product is where a longer patent makes sense: the patent gives the inventor time to recoup their costs which otherwise wouldn’t happen.

That said, the world runs at a much faster pace, and patent durations should be decreased.

Software patents should be discarded (because society doesn’t get any value from publishing software patents although society pays high costs for the economic monopoly, and because small startups cannot compete with software behemoths). Unlikely to happen becaus software powers have monopoly profits which can pay to influence legislation or regulators. Also the US is capturing monopoly payments from the rest of the world so the US loves software patents (ironically given some of the historic reasons for the US kicking the British in the nads for independence).

[danielheath]

> A high value monopoly patent will stay locked up for a long time

Yes, but this rewards you for inventing something high-value, which is the whole point of patents.

Patents on low-value products largely exist to generate lawsuits against productive entities.

[tolmasky]

It is not the whole point of patents. They at least ostensibly exist as a trade to eventually make the invention enter the public domain. Per Wikipedia:

> In accordance with the original definition of the term "patent", patents are intended to facilitate and encourage disclosure of innovations into the public domain for the common good

The idea is that to avoid companies keeping the details of inventions hidden indefinitely using trade secrets, the embargo period is set up as an incentive to disclose the idea. This is an incredibly important part of the entire social contract of patents. Maintaining a complicated legal apparatus (courts, patent offices, etc.) to defend and enforce these legal monopolies is expensive and is paid through public funds. Thus a public good is expected in return. A system that allows the most important inventions to stay locked up forever seems to go against the spirit of this entirely. Perhaps you think that this has its own merit, but it is certainly not the intended purpose of the patent system.

[danielheath]

An exponentially growing annual fee is also a great way to fund public goods.

For example, if you increment the exponent every three years, a $20 initial fee would cost half a billion dollars annually after 20 years. That buys a lot of school supplies.

[oezi]

Getting exponential curves right is very tricky though (just look at Covid). I believe using such escalating fees would just favor the big companies who can stay ahead of the curve.

Another idea I think worth exploring is mandatory licensing at fixed rates which decline over years and/or are tied to revenue the patent holder generates with the patent. The goal really should be to increase utility of the patent for the public.

[kortilla]

> I believe using such escalating fees would just favor the big companies who can stay ahead of the curve.

But that’s fine. If a company can rake in so much money off of one product it’s still providing an obscene amount of value.

[nicoburns]

No it's not. It just entrenches the position of those who have money, to the disadvantage of everyone else.

[kortilla]

No it doesn’t. The whole point of charging exorbitant fees is that the money is being pulled out of the company. That’s the opposite of entrenched.

[nicoburns]

But it doesn't only apply to large companies. It also applies to small companies. And the point at which the small company will have to stop paying the fee because they can't afford it will be much sooner than the large company. Thus giving an advantage to the large companies.

[extropy]

Right and someone at the board meeting will ask - what if we dropped that 10B annual patent fee.

[p1esk]

Benefits of this proposal outweigh the cons. Average length of patent protection will decrease.

[nicoburns]

> Benefits of this proposal outweigh the cons. Average length of patent protection will decrease. reply

Why not do that in the straightforward way of simply decreasing the patent protection duration? Or as other people have suggestion: make it contingent on the type of thing being patented.

[RedComet]

Yeah, sounds cool. That way ma & pa lose their patent right away and Google keeps it forever.

[sbierwagen]

>the cost to renew a patent

Why do you think patents can be renewed?

[extropy]

GP probably meant maintenance fees: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maintenance_fee_(patent)

Would be nice to see increasing annual maintenance fee. 1K for first year 3K for second, 10K for third and so on. After 6 years or so you either make/pay millions of give it up.

Should drastically reduce the amount of junk patents. It it's not worth at least a few million not worth applying.

[projectileboy]

I’m so dumb - this never occurred to me, and I’ve never heard anyone express it this way. This makes so much sense. Thanks.

[tanto]

This would most probably benefit big cooperations more than smaller ones as they can use money to speed up RnD and time to market. I can think of 1000 ways to make the patent system more fair but also 1001 to game each approach. It's a tough but to crack.