It would favour large institutional "inventors" and lock out individuals.
An invention and subsequent patent is only the beginning of a pretty risky endeavour. There are significant risks in bringing a new product to market, such as in funding, timing, marketing, industrial production, and so on.
Overall they will average out. Some patents will be more successful than expected, and some will bomb. Large companies will be able to make a guess, pay the tax, and overall they'll make a profit. The risk on a higher value and paying the tax isn't such a big deal for them.
Small time inventors will be unable to take the risk and be forced to undervalue their own invention lest it bomb. They'll be exploited by large companies that will just pay the limited damages and then exploit their invention.
All this would do is cap the return of small inventors, without affecting the carpet-bombing large companies.
I hate patent trolls as much as the next HNer, but I don't think this idea will work, sorry.
I'm a small time inventor with one patent filed, but I didn't pay the maintenance fees (I had to publish but didn't want to spend thousands more making it final) because it didn't make enough money so it's now in the public domain. A large company could take my work. If they make a success of it where I failed, good on them. But I'll be owed nothing (rather than a proportion), which I think would be unfair since they'd be using my work. I'm already a victim of having been unable to spread the risk in a way that large companies can do.
There is no point in getting a patent if you cannot enforce it. The current situation already favors large patent owners, and my proposal will not make that worse, I believe.
> All this would do is cap the return of small inventors, without affecting the carpet-bombing large companies.
On the contrary. IBM and MS have tens to hundreds of thousands of patents. Keeping them all "Ready to sue" would cost them billions. And .. a small inventor who can't afford $100K in court fees does not have patent protection even if they have a patent.
> If they make a success of it where I failed, good on them. But I'll be owed nothing (rather than a proportion), which I think would be unfair since they'd be using my work. I'm already a victim of having been unable to spread the risk in a way that large companies can do.
So ... if you had paid $0, then a company made money of it, increase the value that year to $1M (pay the $10K tax) and have them license or sue them. You're better off under my proposed system.
An invention and subsequent patent is only the beginning of a pretty risky endeavour. There are significant risks in bringing a new product to market, such as in funding, timing, marketing, industrial production, and so on.
Overall they will average out. Some patents will be more successful than expected, and some will bomb. Large companies will be able to make a guess, pay the tax, and overall they'll make a profit. The risk on a higher value and paying the tax isn't such a big deal for them.
Small time inventors will be unable to take the risk and be forced to undervalue their own invention lest it bomb. They'll be exploited by large companies that will just pay the limited damages and then exploit their invention.
All this would do is cap the return of small inventors, without affecting the carpet-bombing large companies.
I hate patent trolls as much as the next HNer, but I don't think this idea will work, sorry.
I'm a small time inventor with one patent filed, but I didn't pay the maintenance fees (I had to publish but didn't want to spend thousands more making it final) because it didn't make enough money so it's now in the public domain. A large company could take my work. If they make a success of it where I failed, good on them. But I'll be owed nothing (rather than a proportion), which I think would be unfair since they'd be using my work. I'm already a victim of having been unable to spread the risk in a way that large companies can do.