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Comment by thechao | Hacker News Reader

If IP is real property, it should be taxed. The tax system I like for IP works for hire is this: each year you owe 1/4% * N (where N is the age of the IP) in taxes on the IP. Whatever you pay, the "public" (anyone/everyone else) can pay the balance to the USPTO (or LoC) to move that IP in to the public domain.

Non-works-for-hire last for some fixed time, or until all the authors/inventors are dead, whichever comes first. A principal distinction between "works-for-hire" and "private works" is that a private owned work gives any of the authors/inventors unilateral rights to rescind contracts without contractual repercussion.

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> If IP is real property, it should be taxed.

As someone who thinks that the underlying concept of a patent is worthwhile (giving an independant inventor a bit of lead time for their invention against huge companies who could easily copy-cat), I seriously love that idea! Bonus point for somehow scaling the taxation based on real sales vs. lawsuits.

Darn straight. IP values could be self-assessed: you tell the IRS (or equivalent) how much they're worth. However, if you're suing over a violation, that's the official value of the asset. You can't claim $100M in damages on an asset if you're only paying taxes on $30,000 worth of property.

This leads to the notion of being taxed for having a brain.

Software patents shouldn't exist. The concept is patently absurd.

>This leads to the notion of being taxed for having a brain

Isn't this the same logic as used in the US against capital gains taxes, that a person is being punished for being successful?

Ehh - the more typical one is that the person already paid tax on it when they made the money the first time

I fucking hate software patents. The best part about taxing them, like this, is that SW patents become a major financial liability.

If we're doing something stupid, the correct course of action is to stop doing the stupid thing, not to refine the stupidity. Software patents are stupid.

I agree that software patents shouldn't exist. I think the taxation is on leveraging your brain to prevent others from using concepts you've learned to be useful.

With some clever legalese it should even be possible to minimally harm individuals with brains while adding a non negligible cost to those who would (and are) abuse the system

"If IP is real property, it should be taxed."

Surely it is taxed already by profit related taxation eg corporation tax in the UK and I'm sure most other countries have a similar one. Also any sales tax or VAT will capture some loot back to your friendly local Exchequer or equivalent.

OK let's get down to brass tacks: What you seem to be asking for is that if someone can be allowed exclusive rights to something then they should pay for that privilege in some way. That seems fair enough to me but you need to define what exclusivity really means and what sort of return should be sought by the authority involved. If we look a little deeper still: what on earth is IP? You also seem to advocate that if the IP is important enough then it can be purchased by the authority and that authority could release the IP to the commons or a form of commons.

You give away where you are from with the abbreviation USPTO. So we are going to need an internationally agreed definition of IP, if we are even going to begin this discussion (which has already happened and is enshrined in ... some international agreement that I can't recall).

Back in the day there was a somewhat backward colony belonging to a super power, located to the left of the Atlantic ocean. That colony grew, expanded and exploited its natural resources. That colony also had a pretty fast and loose approach to notions like copyright and patents. That colony only acknowledged their own local notion of patent and largely ignored any objections from the right hand side of the Atlantic for quite a while. OK, I'm taking the piss but not much. There's another modern equivalent to my "left pond country" these days - more than one.

So, let's start again: What exactly is IP and how does it get enforced, paid for or protected or whatever?

In the US, IP rights are not a natural right. Instead, they are a limited monopoly granted by the people through their agent (the US government) to inventors and authors. The problem is that there are bad actors "patent trolls" (formally: NPEs: non-practicing entities) who use the court system to make money by suing real companies. There is no income that can be taxed by the government: there's only legal settlements.

The problem is that the monopoly is "very cheap" — think of it as analogous to email being free? By adding a very modest tax to the IP we force NPEs to pony up (make a product) or drop the patent into the public domain.

Notice that it is the owner who determines the IP's value.

That's how you get lead inventors dying mysteriously

Pb is poisonous. No mystery.

Or best case the large company waits it out like RCA did for the TV with Philo Farnsworth

Income from patent licensing is already taxed. We don’t tax assets for existing except for land. This would be a form of wealth tax.

That said I don’t agree with software patents as a concept.

This! I love this!!

Either patents have a place and value, and they should be taxed (even when you are not using them to actually build anything). Or they shouldn't exist.

This is insane, and we should just not tax property instead :)

If you're asking the government to protect your property from people encroaching on it, provide court systems to address disputes over it, or accept other government services to maintain it, you should be taxed on it.

I didn’t ask the government for anything.

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