Comment Personal ideas (Score 1) 723
What would improve the IP laws?
1. Always allow individual creators full rights to use, modify, or perform their own works. Contracts can grant similar rights to others (like corporations), but should not be able to void the abilities of the original authors to use what they created.
2. Disallow or radically limit patents on algorithms, automata, or business plans. I have yet to see any example where a software or business patent created improvements in the industry, though numerous examples of anti-competitive, over-broad, or misused patents have cost companies thousands.
3. Any patent that is not in use for more than five years should be lost. If the company isn't using the patent, why do they have the right to make everyone else pay for it? Just having a logarithmic payment schedule for the patent protection might also help. ie: $1000 first application, $5000 second, $100000 third, $1000000 fourth. With five year periods a drug company can keep their cash cow for 20 years, but only if it is actually being produced. Unless the owner has a good value from it, keeping the patent 10-15 years just won't be worth the money.
4. Shorten copyright protection on software binaries to five years. An additional twenty year period of protection would be allowed only if the source code is to be transferred to the public domain at the end of this period. Without source there should be no additional protection. This would guarantee the public could get something usable after the code is obsolete. I can't count how many software programs have been lost forever because the company that made it is no more. Without this guarantee it is unlikely the original program would ever be useful by the time its term limit expires.
1. Always allow individual creators full rights to use, modify, or perform their own works. Contracts can grant similar rights to others (like corporations), but should not be able to void the abilities of the original authors to use what they created.
2. Disallow or radically limit patents on algorithms, automata, or business plans. I have yet to see any example where a software or business patent created improvements in the industry, though numerous examples of anti-competitive, over-broad, or misused patents have cost companies thousands.
3. Any patent that is not in use for more than five years should be lost. If the company isn't using the patent, why do they have the right to make everyone else pay for it? Just having a logarithmic payment schedule for the patent protection might also help. ie: $1000 first application, $5000 second, $100000 third, $1000000 fourth. With five year periods a drug company can keep their cash cow for 20 years, but only if it is actually being produced. Unless the owner has a good value from it, keeping the patent 10-15 years just won't be worth the money.
4. Shorten copyright protection on software binaries to five years. An additional twenty year period of protection would be allowed only if the source code is to be transferred to the public domain at the end of this period. Without source there should be no additional protection. This would guarantee the public could get something usable after the code is obsolete. I can't count how many software programs have been lost forever because the company that made it is no more. Without this guarantee it is unlikely the original program would ever be useful by the time its term limit expires.
