If the owners/companies no longer exist, then I would think the IP should be free by default. Perhaps that's another law to work on...
I think I have even more elegant solution. All IP should be subject to a tax (or maintenance fee or whatever you want to call it). As soon as the IP owner fails to pay the tax, IP falls to public domain irrevocably. The actual structure of the tax can be subject to debate. I would propose a highly progressive tax over time, for example for patents something like $100 for the first year, then doubling every year.
Seriously, why should IP not be taxed? We tax almost everything else that is possible to tax. Especially given it is far from certain that IP is net benefit for society. (I'm willing to give the benefit of doubt though, that's why I am not proposing to abolish IP completely)
I can support your proposal only if the IP taxes are deductible from incoming tax.
If you can't see the glaring problems there then there's no hope for you....
But hopefully you immediately recognize that it hurts the least advantaged the greatest while also providing a mechanism for anticompetitive behavior under the guise of following your precept (make the fee high enough and only established authors/publishers can hold any copyright).
I really get the feeling you didn't think it through at all....
Correct, but easily solved if the tax were to be based on license sales numbers and income. Small/poor license owners would pay almost nothing whereas the big players would pay plenty.
If there's no income the fee is negligible, permitting the rights holder to squat on them for next to nothing and prevent the use of the otherwise abandoned IP by the public....
For instance, an art gallery takes a photo of an artwork that's out of copyright for reference/insurance and (a) doesn't allow photos in the gallery and (b) the photo which is copyright isn't on sale (as it wasn't intended for that purpose). So the out of copyright artwork is locked up from reproduction.
Variations on this theme are a problem with galleries and museums worldwide.
If it wasn't viable then it would either never be created or would automatically enter the public domain.
Currently, if IP is not commercially viable then the author has the choice of not creating it, or creating it and releasing it under CC or just public domain. So essentially the same.
To assert the model isn't blatantly flawed is absurd
I said the structure can be discussed. There is no problem giving first number of years free to see if the IP is commercially viable. The aggressive progression (doubling every year) means that literally all IP is in public domain after a couple of decades.
A simpler solution is to start with a return to something resembling the original IP laws where one lost their rights within their own lifetime.... Theres a reason that was originally proposed, rather than lifetime protections, and why creators originally accepted it with glee... All parties need to remember those reasons, whether rights holder, state or consumer.
Just stop fighting for a broken concept and come up with something better.
Ed:typos
In 2011 you obtain a patent wholly owned by the company.
In 2012 you fail to pay the franchise tax and filing paperwork for your company so the state dissolves it. You don't care because you aren't making money.
In 2013 another company starts making a product that infringes on your patent.
You are the defacto owner of the patent. This is because you were the owner of the company when it was terminated. All of its assets and liabilities devolved to you. No action was required of you for this to happen, it just happens.
Now imagine this business was actually a joint venture between two wholly owned subsidiaries of two different holding companies, one of which was public but has gone bankrupt and the other was private but subsequently merged with a public conglomerate that spun off a child company, keeping only 40% of its stock after IPO.
The patent is still owned by people, but good luck finding them all.
This is reversing the natural order of things. That bureaucrat isn't nullifying fucking ANYTHING. That bureaucrat is artificially limiting who is allowed to create/use a thing.
The natural state of the information is: "Use this - it's free". The whole of humanity might exist because mirror neurons literally go: "Hey - I can do that too!".
It's only when you add a monstrously complex and entirely artificial patent system on top of things that it gets complex.
So we're ALREADY deciding who is allowed to use things, and it's already artificial and bureaucratic.
All this does is fucking stop making it worse. And patent/copywrite is already so god damn egregious as a system. I'm firmly in the camp of "nuke it from orbit". It's time to try something other than this hideous abusive system.
I agree that patents are odd here, but the solution isn't to patch in more power to bureaucrats over the top of the other power. You seem to be saying this at the end as well, so, as I say, I'm not sure what point you're making. But your excitement on this topic is appreciated.
What is confusing here? The entire structure is already a perversion of the natural world.
If we did not have our government, and the rules that it enforces (those "bureaucrats" you don't seem to like), then there is no "invention" to be nullified.
They already have this power. They enforce it through violence and imprisonment (tools reserved officially to the government). If the bureaucrats want your idea - they will take it, because they are the only thing stopping them from doing so.
The question is not: "Will the government nullify my invention?!?!?". It's - "What might my life have been like if the government did not restrict SO many people from competing at all - by artificially stopping them from using the tools and ideas they see around them? (for fairly ridiculous time periods)"
This is possible, but the power to enforce patents is in the courts, and not in the patent bureaucracy. Having a single group that can invalidate parents on a whim is different to that.
And patents can be useful, although I don't have many examples. SawStop is one, though, where even a 20 year patent doesn't seem to have been long enough to establish a successful business before incumbents swoop in. Patents like that are pro-competition in that scenario. Otherwise why bother starting a new business when your R&D effort can just be taken advantage of by someone else as soon as you hit on the answer?
The invention as disclosed and documented in the patent is free to the world.
In reality, it's a bunch of work which costs money, and if you don't have to spend that money, why would you?
There's an entire government department dedicated to selling this property.
Arguably the American model of abandonment is better because abandoned IP doesn't actually result in any lawsuits, while that UK model is built to effectively encourage them.