Patents

Here’s my proposal for a decent patent issuing practice that should not degrade our basic human right to express ourselves freely:

A patent shall be granted only on inventions when:

  1. A novel idea is expressed in the form of a working implementation.
  2. The invention clearly contributes to the state of the art through its novelty as determined by various independent experts in the field. anyone at any time can oppose or challenge the patent with prior art.
  3. It involved effort and resources (as compared with current average business standards) to turn the idea into an implementation. (eg. no patent shall be awarded for an invention that came about in just one afternoon of work).
  4. The effort has been expended on experimentation with various prototypes, modeling, tests, design iterations, etc..
  5. The patent is essential to the innovation and product development strategy of the company and is not filed just for litigation purposes, eg. to defend against possible competitors who can be sued later in time for infringement (patent submarine strategy), to create a patent portfolio to surround competitors’ technology so as to limit their product development strategy or to drain competitors from their resources through extensive litigation.
  6. The patent cannot be traded and shall be withdrawn or put in the public domain if the inventor ceases to gain financially from it.
  7. The patent will expire after a certain time. The duration is dependent on the field of the patent and is determined each year.
  8. To encourage commercial exploitation of the patent the administration fees for the patent significantly increase each year by an amount that is determined each year and that is higher than just to cover inflation.

In my view business involves work, ie. it should not be possible to obtain financial gain without really doing work.

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