Institute a patent system that requires a prototype be provided within 2 years of a patent application and that the process/invention in the patent be in production and available to market within 5 years. Failure to meet these conditions should invalidate the patent and open the process/invention to public domain.
Provide a litmus test for the specifity needed for a patent application to be approved. The patent should be specific enough that independant ideas are not quashed by megacorperations throwing out hundreds of patent applications a year trying to make a buck in court.
Institute a sliding scale for the cost of a patent. An individual who makes one or two patents a year should not have to pay the price of the corporations who throw out hundreds. This patent spam holds up the process. So it should retain costs similar to todays for the first patent and double with each additional patent up to a fixed amount. That fixed amount should probably be around the actual cost of processing the patent x2.
Comments (4)
Many countries do not have patent processes like ours. In Japan, they traditionally did not secure patents for their products. However, they did engage in other means of ensuring that corporate secrets were kept.
The problem is mega-corporations buying and shelving anything that competes with their business.
They also buy the rights and sit on it without a patent.
Yes this has to stop.
They also buy the rights and sit on it with a patent.
I like the suggestion of Charles Fourier in the 1800's that the inventor be abundantly rewarded by a world body in proportion to the utility, benefit to humanity, of the invention and the intellectual rights then belong to humanity as a whole.