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The e-ink patent is so frustrating.

Another good example of a patent restricting innovation was the patent on 3D Printers. That's why in the past few years, 3D printers have become so much more prevalent and accessible (you can buy one for a few hundred dollars today).

These definitely stifle innovation. I'd think a more reasonable approach could be, you have a patent for 15 years (or whatever arbitrary number is reasonable) or until the patent holder makes some multiple dollar amount from things that use whatever is patented.

That is, if it costs a million dollars to develop e-ink screens, the patent is valid until the company has had revenue of 20 million dollars on devices that have e-ink screens. Tying it to revenue instead of profit is intended since profits can be turned into revenue easily to bypass the restriction otherwise.

You could also add a minimum number of years (obviously less than the max mentioned above) so companies have some protection across various metrics.

In the EU, patents have escalating fees. They don't escalate very fast, but I think this would help with innovation a lot. IMO the first ~4 years can cost a few thousand dollars (so you can get your startup up and running), but the 20th year of a patent should escalate to several hundred thousand or million dollars. That way, building a long-lived "patent fence" becomes economically infeasible the way it is today.

Economically infeasible for NPEs, sure, but still a rounding error for Big Tech.

The issue with schemes that make it difficult for NPEs is that they hurt the small inventor who cannot afford to capitalize their invention. Owners of capital may be able to form a monopsony to drive down the price of patent licenses and essentially squeeze out small inventors.

Escalating fees still seems like a great way to limit the damage to small investors while turning the screws on NPEs, though. If the owners of capital can form this monopsony hurting small investors in the escalating fees case wouldn't they be able to do the same in the constant fee case? Is the proposition that they would be able to keep the monopsony together better with a bigger incentive (avoiding potentially high patent fees once they escalate)?

It seems to me that yes it doesn't do much to reduce the use of patents by Big Tech that they are actually commercializing. It would be nice to solve all the problems but it seems like it solves some of the problems that almost everyone but NPEs can agree on in a neat way without too much collateral damage.

Big Tech can afford to spend billions on patent moats for no other reason than to suffocate any small businesses that cannot raise enough capital to pull their heads above the water. An escalating fee scheme, while not wholly responsible for the problem, seems like it adds to it. It’s yet another barrier to entry that contributes to the enormous failure rate of startups.

Well suppose the valuation mechanism for determining the relative value of patents that the escalating fees were levied upon was implemented by requiring IP holders to declare the price at which they were willing to permanently release the discovery into the public domain in exchange for a one-time payment.

The result of such a scheme might be that is nearly always cheaper to pay the patent office to permanently destroy your competitor's patents and release the discovery into the public domain for everyone then it is to hire lawyers to go to court with your competitor in order to obtain a settlement and mutual licensing agreement.

So whenever large tech companies have disputes with each other they might start destroying each other's patent arsenals rather than going to court, which would level the playing field for everyone else. And if a large number of smaller startups were being harassed by a large company they could crowd source the money needed to pay the patent office to destroy the large firm's patents without spending any money on lawyers or legal fees and without having to halt development.

Just as an example, IBM receives almost 10,000 patents a year. At $100,000-$1,000,000 per patent, that year of patents alone in 15-20 years time would cost $1-10 billion. That is most definitely not a rounding error and would constitute as much as 10% of their annual revenue just to keep that single years worth of patents. I think this sort of escalating pricing scheme would definitely help reduce the barriers for startups and new innovators, and prevent abuse by companies worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

They might be able to afford it, but money is money. The question would be whether the cost of keeping the patent outweighs its potential profits.

The question should be how do we eliminate unnecessary transaction costs and overheads associated with license negotiations, legal fees, and courts costs, and ensure new public inventions can be immediately manufactured by a large number of domestic firms before they are knocked off by foreign manufacturers uninterested in obtaining licenses, while still compensating the original inventor?

A possible solution is to require the patent filers to declare the price at which they are willing to permanently release the invention into the public domain in exchange for a one time payment. Then if someone is sued for IP violation the defendant can crowd-source the inventor's fee and pay it through the patent office to have the the patent destroyed immediately without hiring lawyers or halt production.

The IP registrar could then levy a quarterly maintenance tax on the quit price filed by the IP holder to prevent the inventor's fee from being set infinitely high.

I like the idea but part of me thinks that would just benefit the companies doing well and hurt companies not doing well, potentially affecting competition.

Maybe combine this with a decreasing cap on royalties making patents less profitable over time?

A exponential cost curve to hold a patent would fix that. Every year the cost increases, making it less interesting to hold "dead" patterns bringing in no revenue.

That feels backwards. A patent nobody wants will be public domain. A patent that's actually stifling competition will stay protected. It'll at least cost money to stay protected, so it's not completely backwards, but I don't think this is the right approach.

Bad idea for patents. The public is vastly benefitted by patent expiration. It's also why we can have generic drugs, etc.

Now, exponential cost curve for _copyrights_ is interesting. And arguably already a thing... considering that Mickey Mouse is approaching 100 years old and is not yet in the public domain.

I could see a combo approach.

Ideally, I'd like to see tech patents see a sunset of something like 5 years. The current 20 year hold is bonkers.

However, if we keep the 20 year lifetime, then having an exponential cost of ownership would serve to ward off patent trolling companies. They could still exist to some extent but their operational expenses would be a lot higher than they are now. It'd put a number of them out of business (or at very least free up a bunch of patents).

The trick is coming up with good numbers here. Too low and you might as well not add it. Too high and you might as well eliminate patents all together as they've lost their original purpose (to protect the little inventor).

With the proposal for continuously increasing maintenance fees on ownership it is necessary to establish some public mechanism for determining the relative value of patents upon which the the maintenance fees are levied.

One possible solution is to require the IP holder to declare the quit price at which they are willing to abandon their claim and permanently release the discovery into the public domain prior to the expiration date of the patent in exchange for a one time payment.

This should reduce legal fees and court costs. If a firm is notified of patent infringement and pending litigation, instead of hiring a lawyer and going to court and halting production, they could instead crowd source the funds to pay the quit price to the patent office. The patent office would then pay the original inventor and place the discovery into the public domain for everyone so that there was no basis for continuing legal action.

When large tech companies have legal disputes, they might find that it is always cheaper to pay the patent office to immediately destroy each other's patent arsenals, which would also release all of the discoveries into the public domain and level the playing field for smaller firms as well.

If someone is willing to pay the quit price to the original inventor there should be no problem with expiring patents which have been issued for less than 1 day. 1 business day would likely work fine as the minimum duration for patents.

Counterargument: I get a patent for a special-purpose shell company MegaCorpA, license the technology to MegaCorpB for $1, concentrate all the profits in MegaCorpB and thus MegaCorpA will get a perpetual patent.

Tying patents to revenues of licensees does not work too, because any patent licensed to Samsung will instantly become void.

>> Tying patents to revenues of licensees does not work too, because any patent licensed to Samsung will instantly become void.

I don't see anything wrong with it. Other big companies will prefer to have Samsung as a partner instead as an enemy, and small companies will have very difficult to compete with samsung at scale. And if they do it is because they have done so many other things right, which it is great for consumers

Yeah, but why LG would rush into paying for the license if the patent will become free as soon as Samsung will pay to license it first?

Point is, the original idea of tying patents to revenues needs more thinking.

Because Samsung will use LG ideas too. As a company, I think, it is better to partner with others, so it is a win-win.

> I'd think a more reasonable approach could be, you have a patent for [duration] or until the patent holder makes some multiple dollar amount from things that use whatever is patented.

I don't think this can work in practice. How much money has amazon made off the 1-click patent? If a company patents a new machine that lets them run a factory on half the workers, how much money does that make them?

Even for devices, this seems sketchy.

What percent of revenue counts towards the patent? Is the $100 kindle $100 towards the e-ink patent, or $20, or $5? If the device has 50 patents on various components, is the revenue counted 50x for them, or is the cost divided between them?

I think that enough patents are on internal processes and machines that revenue won't be directly tied to, i.e. on things that aren't consumer goods, that this sort of strategy won't help.

Yes more on 3D printers:

The first FDM 3D printers went on sale in 1995 for $50k. Ten years later they were $25k. Then in 2008 the patents expired. By 2011 a halfway decent printer was $1800. By 2018 $300 3D printers were available worldwide.

I joined the community in 2010, bought my own printer in 2011, and I saw the community operating with my own two eyes. Thousands of people all over the world innovating without patents to improve the situation.

The idea that patents promote innovation is absurd. The primary function of the patent is to stop innovation. All those thousands of people who wanted to improve 3D printers were legally prevented from innovating while the patent was in effect.

I remember in 2012 people on the mailing list talking about 3D printing on to a belt that could move. Literally no one on the mailing list wanted to risk infringing on the Makerbot patent for this even though makerbot quickly stopped selling their belt printer and never sold a new one. To this day the only belt printers that are for sale is a printer with the carriage off angle from the belt to avoid infringing the makerbot patent that hasn’t been used in years.

The rate of innovation would be higher without patents. We’re hurting ourselves for the benefit of those who amassed large patent portfolios so they can charge rent on old designs instead of innovating.

Imagine the health and wealth that could be generated worldwide if we let every country copy the best MRI machines we have, and all our battery factories and chip designs. That wealth would immeasurably improve the lives of people the world over, and it would come back to us in the US as new economic trading partners with their own infrastructure. Along the way they’d find 100x cost savings or better and our medical care would be cheaper.

We are truly shouting ourselves in the foot with patents.

You're right that creative accounting games could be played to try to keep money made on the patent from being considered profit. While harder, I suspect creative accounting could be used to done to make it look like there was no revenue on e-ink screens despite millions of devices containing them had been sold.

> The e-ink patent is so frustrating.

Hmm.. I keep seeing this on HN. I then ask which specific patent and I never get a satisfactory answer. But I'll keep trying. I work in the display industry and am not aware of any specific patent that is blocking progress in developing electrophoretic displays. Are you? If yes, please please point out which specific patent and how it is blocking your design.

I just have to point out, it was really easy to find these. Like took me 30 seconds.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US20080043317A1/en

https://patents.justia.com/assignee/e-ink-corporation

https://patents.google.com/patent/US9341917B1/en

https://stks.freshpatents.com/E-Ink-Holdings-Inc-nm1.php

And I have to point out that just googling for E Ink patents doesn't help us understand what point you are making. It is the equivalent of me claiming that Microsoft is blocking operating system progress and then justifying it by giving you a set of Microsoft patents. I hope the analogy is clear.

When a competitor appears, they usually sue with these two patents:

    https://patents.google.com/patent/US6120588A/en (expired)
    https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160187759A1/en

That said, there are a lot of inexpensive epaper panels for sale on Alibaba.

One of China's competitive advantages is that they don't give a shit about patents. This leads to extremely fast product cycles but also occasional stories about original inventors who feel they were screwed because people in China ripped off their design and improved it without their consent (or license fees).

An example: https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2018/01/31/meet-the...

In my industry, unfortunately, this has led to some level of bias and mistrust against employees of Chinese origin. The problem is, as you state, there have been multiple cases of individuals working for a company, getting access to key formulations, processes and then a couple of years later, the exact same product starts getting made in China.

> they usually sue with these two patents

I couldn't find a lawsuit referencing either patent. Is there a link you could help provide?

https://www.eink.com/news.html?type=releasedetail&id=223&yea...

I'm not sure why you find it so hard to believe that the Eink group has created 2000 display patents to use against competitors. At the bottom of that page they say:

> E Ink intends to protect and defend its intellectual and other property worldwide by the means available in various countries.

I tend to believe them.

> I'm not sure why you find it so hard to believe that the Eink group has created 2000 display patents to use against competitors.

I guess it is because I work in the display industry and I've never heard them talked about this way within my industry, conferences, symposiums or other peer group events. I've only seen this here on HN and on Boing Boing and some blogs which referenced an HN post making similar claims. I'll try to give you an analogy. Imagine if someone told you Microsoft group has created 2000 software patents to use against competitors and that they intend to defend theier intellectual property. Would you then believe if I told you Microsoft is blocking progress in the software industry? Because that's what the prior post is claiming. Incredible claims ought to at least have some proof or evidence, shouldn't they?

I would believe Microsoft was blocking progress if only they were making operating systems or office suites or whatever it is they patent.

It isn't just a claim though - I pointed to an actual lawsuit. If there was a single eink competitor being used in products outside of China, I would agree with you. TCL claims to have something in the works, so maybe change is coming.

> If there was a single eink competitor being used in products outside of China

I'd say there are far fewer Microsoft operating system competitors than there are eink competitors. Also eink is an fpl manufacturer not a whole industry. Meaning they're a component supplier and there's tonnes of alternatives, memory-LCD is what I promote, and even within the electrophoretic space, there's ClearInk, Shenzhen Wenfeng, and several others. In any case, it is unclear to me what the main argument is. If you are trying to say eink is blocking progress, then I don't see any evidence for that, and that 2012 lawsuit in fact seems like an entirely reasonable lawsuit since based on what I understand, 2 engineers who had worked for Eink in Boston moved to China, started Guangzhou OED and then produced the exact same pigment and particle formulations and started selling knockoff displays with even the exact same TFT backplanes and resolutions.

Legal threats won't necessarily result in lawsuits.

Lack of publicly accessible lawsuits doesn't input lawyers of Company X doesn't shot down every single remote competitor preemptively with threats of legal action. At that point possible competitors either won't even try bothering or they'll pay whatever asked and sign a NDA preventing then from disclosing the patents in question (as a common practice on patent litigation deals).

Just to confirm since this isn't publicly accessible, are you saying this actually happened with E Ink? as I mentioned I work in the display industry, and if something like that happened, surely we'd all be talking about it during SID or stuff like that. When did it happen? Where? I'd love to know.

I'm telling how patent litigation works in general and why you can't expect anybody to spoonfeed a random stranger on internet with a list of patents.

> I'm telling how patent litigation works in general and why you can't expect anybody to spoonfeed a random stranger on internet with a list of patents.

I'm unsure what's with the "spoonfeed" remark, it seems intended to be insulting. As I said, I'm really curious what patent and what lawsuits or similar criminal activity has been done (or from the sound of these comments is being done) by E-Ink. HN people are referring to it in many posts and because I happen to work in the display industry, I'm really surprised. I'd never heard anything like that amongst my peers or during conferences. The main place I've seen this refrain is on HN. Please have a look at my comment history as I keep asking about which patent people are talking about. It is the equivalent of a bunch of my display industry people claiming that Google is blocking search engine progress and then justifying it by giving you a set of Google patents and then shouting, see there's the clear proof that Google is a bad actor. I hope the analogy is clear and that it is also clear why I remain unconvinced about both!

> I'd think a more reasonable approach could be, you have a patent for 15 years (or whatever arbitrary number is reasonable) or until the patent holder makes some multiple dollar amount from things that use whatever is patented.

The problem with patents is that they are national laws. A 15 year patent on a fusion reactor can be ignored by manufacturers in other countries after waiting 1 day without obtaining a license. Then domestic manufacturers are saddled with legal fees and court costs for decades.

A better reform would be to require the patent filers to declare the quit price at which they are willing to immediately release the discovery into the public domain in exchange for a one time payment. Then if an inventor patents a fusion reactor, and other countries begin manufacturing it immediately while ignoring the patent, domestic manufacturers could crowd source the money to pay the quit price to the inventor to have the patent office destroy the patent after 1 day as well.

> You could also add a minimum number of years (obviously less than the max mentioned above) so companies have some protection across various metrics.

As long as the original inventor gets a cash reward why is a minimum time necessary? If the patent is destroyed one day after being filed the inventor still has the original copy of everything they built and cash reward, they just don't have a monopoly on the ability to make additional copies, and neither does anyone else.

If there were a political candidate whose sole platform was "dismantle the US Patent Office," I could look past almost any other position in my conviction to vote for them. That's how harmful I believe the current patent system to be. Innovators should not be afraid to be sued over trivial implements by non-practicing entities before they can even get their business off the ground. Patents kill innovation, 100%.

The U.S. had a president not too long ago who tried to shake things up. Ended up giving the patent office truckloads of cash, considered it "job creation". Goal was to improve efficiency, but all it did was unthrottle submissions, and lower quality. On paper, it looked more efficient, apparently.

The U.S. also "harmonized" their patent laws with the rest of the world to reward paper-pushers who are "first to file", instead of those who are "first to invent." Should have been the other way around.

That with lowering submission fees and requirements drastically, those efforts basically turned the office into an even bigger joke.

Getting a patent means virtually nothing without enforcement and protection, and that requires litigation.

First to file has some advantages that are hard to ignore.

It incentivises early submission which means we all learn from it earlier.

It disincentivises submarine patents where one party deliberately hides an obvious invention until another market player has established a business and then proves they invented it first.

> Likewise, e-ink devices have largely had no innovation due to the patents of the e-ink corporation being used to stifle innovation.

Uhm... I work in the display industry and have never heard this. They seem to be a typical display manufacturer progressing at what is decent or maybe even above average for display industry products. Could you clarify what patent you're referring to and what exactly you mean by no innovation?

Pharmaceutical patents, operatively, are really more about latter stage of drug development (human trials, regulatory approval, etc.) than they are about invention and discovery. A limited monopoly (or alternatives, such as bounties) make sense here, but we could drop the patent designation altogether. In fact, working through a patent frame can get in the way. Drugs that aren't patentable fall outside the framework and therefore have no funding mechanism for these later frameworks. Start the clock at approval. Drop the limitations. Prior art

Business models, software & obvious/trivial inventions were never supposed to be patentable, and technically aren't. The fact that they often are in practice is an argument for reform. One-click remains the perfect example, as it falls into all three categories.

Also, look at the state of the patent "industry." Patent trolls. Admit-nothing mutual licensing agreements. Patent arsenals held for defense. The Apple-Samsung war, with no result or benefit to either.

Ideologically patents are suppose to promote innovation. The original idea and spirit of the law was that for a limited time monopoly you disclose all details on your invention instead of keeping it all a secret to yourself.

Obviously this is no longer the case as the problem is (1) too many patents on broad things and (2) too long of a monopoly term for todays fast moving technology.

It's been 150 years since we established the patent office and the only big things that were changed was moving from first to invent to first to file and increasing the monopoly term from 17 to 20 years. I think a 5-7 year monopoly term is much more reasonable and would maintain the original spirit of the law.

It seems like a slightly weaker patent system where the holder only retains the right to share in the profits on a piece of technology would solve most of the problems.

Like, once you publish a patent, anyone who uses it needs to pay you a meaningful portion of profit they derive from using it. The patent holder still has most of the incentive to use it, but R&D on the patent would be fully open and incur no fee. Third parties could sell improvements back to the patent holder or file their own patents on the improvements.

> Software can be protected by copyright.

You want software to be protected for the lifetime of the author + 70ish years? 95 years in case of corporate authorship?

The Beatles catalogue, released 60 years ago, won't pass into the public domain until 70 years _after_ the last Beatle dies. Maybe my grand kids will see that day.

Given that the law almost made the 8 note ostinato from Katy Perry's Dark Horse into a copyrightable bit of music I would weep if we tried to really apply copyright to software.

Strangely, after the patents for mechanical keyboard switches expired, keyboard prices seemed to have doubled or tripled, except for the really crappy Amazon ones that break after 6 months (I’ve been through two)

Then stop buying the crappy ones. Like with anything else, you get what you pay for.

That’s rude. 10 years ago I could buy a $75-100 keyboard that would last 6 years. Now the same money gets me something that lasts 6 months so I have to spend $270 to get one that’s decently made. Old $20 keyboards from thrift stores and the drug store used to last me 5-10 years. But yeah, everyone should spend $250+ or else they are chumps

Leopold. $109. One of the best boards you can get.

https://mechanicalkeyboards.com/shop/index.php?l=product_lis...

It's not rude to point out that you impulsively bought low end stuff and expected it to be better just because it was "mechanical." Lemons and garbage exist in every product category.

>> Patents clearly kill innovation. Like, that shouldn't even be a question.

Surely there are examples where patents have stifled innovation. I am unclear how this would apply in general.

The idea of patents is to encourage inventors or organizations "invest" into research and development to create inventions and reap rewards for their investments. If there were no patent protection (and ignoring other forms of intellectual property for sake of simplicity), then inventors or organizations would either (a) not put money into any inventions that could easily be copied by others upon launch, or (b) have measures to keep the inventions hidden even upon launch. In that sense, patents mechanism are intended to lead higher investments towards developing inventions, and, are set up such that the inventions become publicly known and available after respective periods of time.

Is the suggestion that the patents should be abolished? If so, one also needs to explain how and why would inventors and organizations spend money into research work leading to good inventions?

I agree that problems do happen. There are many patents around which should not have been issued. However, the challenge is not that the law is at fault. The challenge is that execution is at fault wherein many obvious "inventions" get accepted for example.

I can accept if the argument made is that good execution of the well-intended patent laws is guaranteed to be a challenge and therefore the patent law does not make any practical sense. However, we also need to be aware of the side effects of it as reduction in innovation because of reduced research and development investments.

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Recommended reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent