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What's astonishing is the technicality really doesn't change the problem much.

I've been thinking along the same lines as you, but (to play devils advocate and help discussion):

> 1. You should not be allowed to sell a patent. The intent of a patent is to give the inventor(s) enough lead time to develop the idea, not to create a market for ideas.

Why are ideas worth nothing? If I have a breakthrough while researching, I'm screwed unless I also manage to form a company with a production line?

> 2. A patent should not be valid unless you can demonstrate it. You shouldn't be allowed to own ideas that are beyond your means to execute.

Would a prototype be acceptable, or does it have to be viable for production? Also, between coming up with an idea and being able to show it as viable might be a reasonable amount of time

> 3. There should be very low limits on patent infringement damage claims thereby removing the financial incentive of using patents and anti-competitive and extortion weapons.

This one feels the most concerning. If the limits are low, then why would anyone bother following them? You could easily make it cheaper for big companies to copy ideas and run with them, then pay people off when they get caught.

Anything that encourages people who have a new, innovative idea to hide it to try and make money is against the original aim.

I do, in general, like the approach though. Maybe there are points along the way:

1. You have a new, awesome, innovative idea. You can get a patent for it.

2. You have to show some working, or viable prototype within a certain time period (short, a few years maybe)

3. With a real example, you can then get a longer patent.

4. You can sell it, but the original time limit still applies.

This way you're compensated for coming up with great ideas (but you or someone you sell it to has to be able to make it a reality soon) and have to release how things work into the public domain (the original intent of patents).




>Why are ideas worth nothing?

Ideas are worth exactly as much as you can sell them for.

> If I have a breakthrough while researching, I'm screwed unless I also manage to form a company with a production line?

You would be exactly right if you removed "screwed" because it implies that you're entitled to be rewarded for your ideas and not being paid for ideas alone is unfair to you.

You're not entitled to that.

You're not even entitled to be rewarded for actual, hard work (e.g. if you work for a year on software product that fails to sell, you worked hard but that alone doesn't mean someone will give you money because of that).

The problem with patents is that they grant 20 year monopoly on patented ideas and people finally realized that there are very lucrative ways to abuse that monopoly for financial gain, without actually creating any value i.e. if you patent an idea for making an ice cream and don't actually make an ice cream, you can still extract value by suing people who actually do make ice cream, even if they came up with the idea independently, as it usually happens, given that in U.S. alone there are 300 millions of mostly college educated people i.e. a lot of people to come up with ideas.




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