So if the sale of IP is allowed because the new company will use it, that still leaves the visual implant users in the dark (no pun intended), but if the sale of IP is not allowed or is placed into the public domain to allow visual implant users to use it, then the original company was deprived of the value of the IP.
And if nobody qualifies, then even if there are willing buyers the IP would be public domain'ed.
There is still a huge potential for earning by investing in something like this, even with restrictions as described.
Well, they can sell it to someone who is willing to continue supporting it for the use that the original company couldn't make work.
or release it into public domain
Yeah, that "lose it" part is the problem - if they can't find a company that's willing to continue supporting what was already proven to be an unsuccessful use case, then their IP has no value.
You're assuming that someone else can make it work financially in the original domain, but what if no one can?
The IP may have value in other domains, but you seem to be saying that it goes into the public domain if no one can make it work in the original domain.
If that's the rule on IP with medical uses, medical applications just went to the bottom of the list of uses. In fact, you'd be stupid to go for a medical application of IP that is used elsewhere.
Maybe it will push these companies to make support easier as well, and Open Source parts of it where it makes sense to.
On another hand. Lifetime support of technology (say 50 years) is damn expensive. Let say you need a dozen of engineers (hardware + software) + doctors to keep it going. It's 12 people * 200k salary (if you don't like this number, pick your own) * 50 years = $120M.
I think you can potentially argue that you don't need a dozen people to support this. However, I think it's a fair number to support aging hardware + software.
Unfortunately, such things work only with a scale. You need 10 people to support 100 customers, 20 people to support 1000 customers and 40 people to support 10000.
If they got to 10000 customers, I could see them getting enough money to fund such trust. Having just 300 customers won't be enough.
Looking at the crunchbase (https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/second-sight). They whole funding was $130M.
My understanding is that copyright law is meant to allow a company to profit off its ideas for a set period of time, in order to recoup R&D costs. Then, if the company no longer has the means to profit off the IP, and won't sell it to another who wishes to make the IP available, the IP should become public domain.