"The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying."<p>- John Carmack
Has anyone got a theory as to why video and video streaming seem particularly prone to patent trolls? A few years ago people might have accepted the answer that "they're really complicated", but I think we all accept now that patents are pretty much BS. So there must be some other incidental business reason why so many people went and filed patents on these ideas. Because Hollywood has lots of money and a reliance on video but no tech understanding maybe?
So I had an idea the other day for a patent reform: property tax on patents.<p>As long as a company wants to keep the monopoly rights over a patented invention, they are taxed a percentage of the patent's market value each year. They can choose either to pay that tax or sell the patent to someone else.<p>The government would offer to buy any patent for its market value, using tax revenue gathered from other patents, in doing so putting the invention into the public domain.<p>This would discourage companies from building large 'defensive' patent portfolios, since they'd be expensive to maintain. It works for the 'lone inventor' scenario too, since the market value of a new, untried invention would be low.<p>Once a patent's value is proven by developing the patent, its value will rise. At some point, the benefit derived from the patent's monopoly rights will no longer be worth the cost, and the rational thing to do is sell the invention.
This guy literally "saved" GeoCities hah.
(dutch) <a href="http://webwereld.nl/nieuws/64140/nederlander-redt-geocities.html" rel="nofollow">http://webwereld.nl/nieuws/64140/nederlander-redt-geocities....</a>
I can see allowing a patent on software to the extent the invention incorporates a truly novel and interdependent physical component. But plain software patents are, for the most part, bogus and ought to be outright eliminated. There is no dearth of software innovation, and the litigation is twice as expensive as development.
Just to clarify, the <i>idea</i> of video in the browser wasn't novel. Your implementation was novel and might even have been the first instance of the general idea, but the only way you could claim such an obvious idea as novel would be to have invented the browser.
I'm glad we have such staunch defenders here and at the head of the Patent Office. This is nice to read, and Ask Patents is a great concept that perhaps you can be a part of.