[akoboldfrying]

What do you think will happen if IP becomes impossible to afford, as it surely will under such a policy? Do you think companies that value IP will bother investing further in R&D, let alone even stay in your country?

Congratulations on the massive net loss in taxable income in your country.

EDIT: Removed some mean words.

[patmcc]

It'll only be impossible to hold for long periods of time. We can start the tax at $1, it hits $1mil after 20 years - and for 99.9999% of IP by year 20 it's either clearly worth zero or clearly worth >$1mil so it'll be an easy choice. It'll force things into the public domain faster and make it expensive to hold a big bullshit patent catalog, but for actively used properties it'll be fine.

Companies are going to want to sell in one of the richest markets in the world; they can either pay for IP protection or not be granted it.

edit: I'm not suggesting these exact $ values as clearly being the correct ones, it's just an example.

[hervature]

You do not seem to understand how patents work because of other comments thinking that you can patent something without publicly disclosing the invention. In and of itself, this comment is silly because the answer to your question "What do you think will happen if IP becomes impossible to afford, as it surely will under such a policy?" is "exactly what happens when patents expire currently." It appears you are unaware that companies still invest in R&D knowing they at most get a few decades of exclusive rights.

[dustingetz]

in the software ip case, they can invest in building competitive products in an open market. If your software IP is a secret then don’t publish!

[akoboldfrying]

So, for example, the secret sauce that makes the CPLEX and Gurobi solvers tens or hundreds of times faster than open source equivalents should simply be released to the public, leading to the immediate loss of 90% of those products' competitive advantage?

You don't see how such a policy would spur terror among large, profitable companies with trade secrets, leading to them moving overseas?

[Rygian]

If it's secret sauce, it's not a patent.

[beepbooptheory]

In these threads it always end up being: "Sure Foo would be nice, but, I don't know if you are aware, we are actually held at gunpoint by the status quo; its all really a non starter when you consider this fact."

If this is the only real problem, than why not just let them go overseas? Let the market play it out? The boon of progress and freedom X country would get from becoming even little more rational about IP would pay for itself and be better for actual people.

[mschuster91]

> The boon of progress and freedom X country would get from becoming even little more rational about IP would pay for itself and be better for actual people.

That's what China has been doing for decades, and "gongkai" [1] is just one tiny part of it. While life for the average Chinese citizen has gone up - the CCP managed to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty - the life of most Western populations has gone down the drain as entire industries, entire towns were unable to cope with unfair competition.

The societal consequences of that will haunt us all for many years to come.

[1] https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297

[kortilla]

I don’t think you understand how patents are used. It’s not secret sauce if it’s patented.