Has the idea of a patent tax ever been explored?
Basically, increasing the cost of filing patents incrementally to regulate excessive patenting and encourage companies to be more selective.
Basically, increasing the cost of filing patents incrementally to regulate excessive patenting and encourage companies to be more selective.
Unfortunately Berne convention has been written in a way that basically does not allow any kind of taxation of IP in arts and literary works. Which, of course, is amazing, mindboggling power grab by IP industry, done already in 18th century.
Generalizing patents and copyright as IP is a fallacy and leads to wrong conclusions.
I recommend reading this article by Richard Stallmann on this topic https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html
It's not free at the beginning, and the fees are less than you suggest, but that's mostly what we do have: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maintenance_fee_(patent)