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Comment by matesz | Hacker News Reader

Problem is with the law, more specifically possibility of completely prohibiting uses of the patent by the patent author. This is very stupid, because others have to innovate around this, which in most cases isn't possible given resources and in many not possible at all.

The solution is to remove possibility of prohibiting patent uses and create better financial system where patent authors can get on revenue streams/shares of patent users. This is doable and the only sensible option imo. The amount of revenue chunk/shares/whatever should be decided by courts.

If domestic vs international is the problem, allow prohibiting patent use for foreign entities. Problem solved.

Where is the catch? If there isn't why we are not doing anything to make it happen?

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Once upon the time most patents were filed with the hope that they will be a source of revenue through royalties.

Now most patents are filed by companies who own the patents of their employees with the purpose of being weapons against competitors. The patents are used either to prevent the appearance of new competitors or to ensure that the existing competitors cannot push the patent owner out of the market.

When the purpose of the patents is anticompetitive, the patent owner either refuses licensing or requests absurd conditions for licensing, knowing that nobody will be able to accept those.

I agree that what you propose would be a great improvement in the patent law, restoring the original purpose of the patents, of being only a source of revenue, instead of preventing any competition.

Moreover, there are very few examples, if any, in the history of patents, when a patent, especially a revolutionary one, was enough for making useful products, in the form conceived by the inventor. Almost always, the patents became really useful only after others have invented additional improvements, removing various shortcomings of the original patent.

When the patent owners refuse licensing, even if they are not patent trolls and they really attempt to manufacture products based on their patent, they typically do not succeed to make products as good as those that would be made by a third party who would have licensed the patent and then would have added improvements on top of it.

This is great overview. Maybe the problem is that there is so much stuff to rewrite in the law, that nobody wants to start working on this because it would be too much work? Or is it lobbying?

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