Combining transferrability and making patent dirt-cheap to acquire means that most patents will end up with companies that won't put it in productive use (most recent example, see Lecun's account for convnet patent: https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1412549942229487620). The hoarding behavior is killing innovation.
Two ways to solve this: 1). limit transferrability, for example: patents can only be owned by natural persons and cannot be transferred to other persons or legal entities; 2). making it very expensive to keep the patents.
> Two ways to solve this: 1). limit transferrability, for example: patents can only be owned by natural persons and cannot be transferred to other persons or legal entities; 2). making it very expensive to keep the patents.
Or require active productive use after a certain time period to maintain the patent, at least for certain classes of owners [1].
[1] ...because small-time inventors will probably have more trouble putting their inventions to productive use, and you don't want to disadvantage them w.r.t. some big corporation (e.g. if all patents expire in five years without use, the corp may just decide to wait instead of paying). This probably could be phrased as an exception to a general rule for entities that only control a small number of patents.
Two ways to solve this: 1). limit transferrability, for example: patents can only be owned by natural persons and cannot be transferred to other persons or legal entities; 2). making it very expensive to keep the patents.