[mchusma]

What a crappy patent. We really need patent reform. This is basically a patent troll (or they plan to be a gatekeeper and make money from the companies that make VR).

This company has about a 0% chance in the next 20 years of producing high quality VR. There is already prior art here.

So many ways to make patents better, including: - making it more expensive, with annual fees - increase the cost over time - just generally setting a target to reduce acceptance by 50%

Patents are ok in theory, when they promote true, material innovation via government enforced monopoly. However, the cost to society is high, so the cost should be high. And patents floating around more than 5-10 years are the ones with the most damage.

The only main counterexample is pharma. But here, it's also broken because most patents are not for groundbreaking drugs. We can also incentivize in other ways, like grants and contests (e.g. first person to cure X disease gets $1B, second person $500M).

[spywaregorilla]

Allowing nullification by demonstrated lack of effort to utilize the patent, relative to the means of the patent holder is my personal belief.

[mwint]

Under your system, would attempting to sell/license the patent to someone else count as effort-to-utilize?

[spywaregorilla]

Sure. Provided the new owners / licenses meet the bar for actually utilizing the patent.

[ImprobableTruth]

>We can also incentivize in other ways, like grants and contests

You would need to quadruple healthcare r&d spending to make up for private spending (in 2018 it was 130 billion private to 43 billion public r&d spending). Not impossible, but a tough sell.

[jjoonathan]

How much of that private spending went to $600k/yr lawyers rather than $60k/yr scientists?

How much of the public spending went to $60k/yr scientists rather than $600k/yr lawyers?

[ImprobableTruth]

Afaik R&D spending really only means actual science - at least that's how R&D spending is defined for tax break purposes, so I'd imagine the stats are using the same definition.

[jjoonathan]

Maaaaybe, but I've seen what a few companies count as R&D and I wouldn't be so sure. I work in a pretty traditional SwE role, not at a pharma company (I bailed on Chem long ago when I saw the salaries). By my reckoning none of what we do should be categorized as R&D, but for tax purposes almost all of it is. Both SwE hours and lawyer hours (we have a resident lawyer). It's pretty obvious when the accountants go fishing for excuses and they always seem to be able to find them.

Whenever I hear about a pharma company getting held accountable, it's for even more egregious violations (put a token lab in every building now it's all R&D wheee).

Point is: I have my doubts.