[procombo]

Bad idea for patents. The public is vastly benefitted by patent expiration. It's also why we can have generic drugs, etc.

Now, exponential cost curve for _copyrights_ is interesting. And arguably already a thing... considering that Mickey Mouse is approaching 100 years old and is not yet in the public domain.

[cogman10]

I could see a combo approach.

Ideally, I'd like to see tech patents see a sunset of something like 5 years. The current 20 year hold is bonkers.

However, if we keep the 20 year lifetime, then having an exponential cost of ownership would serve to ward off patent trolling companies. They could still exist to some extent but their operational expenses would be a lot higher than they are now. It'd put a number of them out of business (or at very least free up a bunch of patents).

The trick is coming up with good numbers here. Too low and you might as well not add it. Too high and you might as well eliminate patents all together as they've lost their original purpose (to protect the little inventor).

[visualradio]

With the proposal for continuously increasing maintenance fees on ownership it is necessary to establish some public mechanism for determining the relative value of patents upon which the the maintenance fees are levied.

One possible solution is to require the IP holder to declare the quit price at which they are willing to abandon their claim and permanently release the discovery into the public domain prior to the expiration date of the patent in exchange for a one time payment.

This should reduce legal fees and court costs. If a firm is notified of patent infringement and pending litigation, instead of hiring a lawyer and going to court and halting production, they could instead crowd source the funds to pay the quit price to the patent office. The patent office would then pay the original inventor and place the discovery into the public domain for everyone so that there was no basis for continuing legal action.

When large tech companies have legal disputes, they might find that it is always cheaper to pay the patent office to immediately destroy each other's patent arsenals, which would also release all of the discoveries into the public domain and level the playing field for smaller firms as well.

If someone is willing to pay the quit price to the original inventor there should be no problem with expiring patents which have been issued for less than 1 day. 1 business day would likely work fine as the minimum duration for patents.