This really seems like a great idea!
Anyone see any reason why it shouldn't be?
Anyone see any reason why it shouldn't be?
Edit: to bring the concept to perspective, imagine having to assign a valuation to new borns so in the instance they die as a result of negligence the damages are capped at the assigned valuation of the deceased at their birth.
At the moment, patents are cheap compared to the value they have as an offensive weapon, and this is what I hope to address with my proposal.
As for copyrights - the same framework would make infinite extension unaffordable even for Disney, so I hope we would all benefit.
> Therefore, if at the end of the year neither yourself nor anyone else had made any money from your IP, just assign zero
How would that solve the issue of patents being used as a offensive weapon? Under your proposal if a patent troll has thousands of patents and has made zero revenue on them, they would pay zero tax. On the other hand if they made money, they will happily pay the tax.
This would force the patent troll to set the value to something balances so that they can afford the taxes while still recouping enough infringement damages.
I want YOU to value that patent (and the tax just make sure it is not arbitrarily high). When you sue for damages, you must have that estimate. I just want to force that to happen in a way that discourages over estimation.
> How would that solve the issue of patents being used as a offensive weapon? Under your proposal if a patent troll has thousands of patents and has made zero revenue on them, they would pay zero tax. On the other hand if they made money, they will happily pay the tax.
Court cases take years to start (and resolve). The patent troll's leverage is "if you don't license, I'll sue". If they have to pay $10,000 for every $1M patent, they will not be able to afford their current business model - they will not be able to sue for more than they paid taxes for. (The lawsuit is likely - and perhaps should legally be required - to be filed only after tax is paid).
If you can declare $0 and not pay taxes on the IP you are basically coming full circle to existing taxation based on the income generated by the IP. However, the more important issue with your proposal is an IP holder might not want to declare $0, despite no current revenue, because your proposal would then tie that $0 valuation to potential damages in the instance of an infringement case.
>As for copyrights - the same framework would make infinite extension unaffordable even for Disney, so I hope we would all benefit.
As both a small business owner and consumer I have always been on the other side of the Disney argument. Why do you think we would all benefit from Disney losing IP protections? Most of the time its a innovation argument, but is their really any innovation being stifled by the Mouse?
As a business owner, if my company creates some form of IP, say a cartoon mouse whom I copyright/trademark to various degrees (name, logo, color(s), etc...),the company invests capital to create a movie starring the mouse and the market votes with their wallets, which the company pays taxes on, and like Steve Jobs I am fanatical about Quality Control and just keep reinvesting in the IP, creating products with the Mouse that the market love and keep paying taxes. Why, at some arbitrary point in time, should my company lose IP protections to the cartoon Mouse and all completed works with the Mouse? As a consumer, I currently know Disney for its high quality productions and there is a lot of goodwill with the brand that has been established over a lifetime, now with the floodgates opened and everyone able to profit off Disney IP there will be confusion in the marketplace leading toward loss of goodwill with the brand.
Copyright is willingly extended by the public to private interests for the purpose of fostering innovation and creativity.
The question isn't how do we benefit by Disney losing IP protections, the question is how do we benefit by maintaining what we have graciously given them? What return on investment, if you will, is the public getting for Mickey not being in the public domain?
For that year (alone), and I proposed you set it when you pay your taxes - that is, at the end of the year, in retrospect. In this case, there is never a reason for you to file anything other than $0 unless someone else is making money of it (if you are, then you're already being taxed on it).
> Why do you think we would all benefit from Disney losing IP protections? Most of the time its a innovation argument, but is their really any innovation being stifled by the Mouse?
It's supposed to be the other way around. We have granted Disney limited monopoly in return for wide availability. "Steamboat Willy" was released with the understanding that it will become public domain within 50 years. The question is, why on earth did we retroactively give another 100 years of that monopoly for free?
And even if it wasn't retroactive - the current 100+ years doesn't seem reasonable to me at all.
> Why, at some arbitrary point in time, should my company lose IP protections to the cartoon Mouse and all completed works with the Mouse?
The only reason they currently have these protections is that they bought them from Congress.
Why do you, as an employer, stop paying your employees a couple of months after you fire them / they quit? IP is not the same as work-for-hire, but it doesn't deserve the eternal protection it currently has. I am not aware of anyone who did NOT publish in 1930 because "I only get 50 years of copyright protection".
And ... you are arguing a strawman. I did not argue that IP should be abolished. Just introduce an economic cost to the unlimited monopoly, which is currently free.
Trademark is different. That rewards not the act of creation, but the ongoing investment in a brand. Do I want a huge quantity of something for above average quality and below average price? Buy Kirkland Signature. Do I want outdoor gear that will be covered no matter what happens? LLBean has me covered.
Disney almost surely makes almost no profit off of Steamboat Willy as a film, and in fact according to the copyright laws of the time, it wouldn't be covered today, so Walt probably didn't factor in the 21st century when amortizing his costs. Is there some teenager out there who could create some truly inspiring film by remashing clips from Steamboat Willy? I have no idea, but would love to find out. But a Mickey Mouse mug is more about trademark, and Disney should get to profit off that as long as people want to buy them. And if the teenagers film hurts the trademark, then that's something that could be resolved without an indefinite extension of copyright terms.
An invention and subsequent patent is only the beginning of a pretty risky endeavour. There are significant risks in bringing a new product to market, such as in funding, timing, marketing, industrial production, and so on.
Overall they will average out. Some patents will be more successful than expected, and some will bomb. Large companies will be able to make a guess, pay the tax, and overall they'll make a profit. The risk on a higher value and paying the tax isn't such a big deal for them.
Small time inventors will be unable to take the risk and be forced to undervalue their own invention lest it bomb. They'll be exploited by large companies that will just pay the limited damages and then exploit their invention.
All this would do is cap the return of small inventors, without affecting the carpet-bombing large companies.
I hate patent trolls as much as the next HNer, but I don't think this idea will work, sorry.
I'm a small time inventor with one patent filed, but I didn't pay the maintenance fees (I had to publish but didn't want to spend thousands more making it final) because it didn't make enough money so it's now in the public domain. A large company could take my work. If they make a success of it where I failed, good on them. But I'll be owed nothing (rather than a proportion), which I think would be unfair since they'd be using my work. I'm already a victim of having been unable to spread the risk in a way that large companies can do.
> All this would do is cap the return of small inventors, without affecting the carpet-bombing large companies.
On the contrary. IBM and MS have tens to hundreds of thousands of patents. Keeping them all "Ready to sue" would cost them billions. And .. a small inventor who can't afford $100K in court fees does not have patent protection even if they have a patent.
> If they make a success of it where I failed, good on them. But I'll be owed nothing (rather than a proportion), which I think would be unfair since they'd be using my work. I'm already a victim of having been unable to spread the risk in a way that large companies can do.
So ... if you had paid $0, then a company made money of it, increase the value that year to $1M (pay the $10K tax) and have them license or sue them. You're better off under my proposed system.
So, rather, it would probably discourage patenting these things (in favour of keeping them deeply confidential) until their value has actually been proven, which goes against the purpose of the patent system in the first place, to encourage the disclosure of inventions in exchange for a monopoly on exploiting it.
Yes. At full value PER ONE YEAR. (Property taxes are per year, and the liability limit I propose is "per infringer per year" (or "per infringement per year" if infringement is defined in a macroscopic enough sense).
If I rent out a house, is it not enough to pay taxes on the income I get from rent ?
> Should I really have to pay taxes on it to keep it out of the public domain?
Yes. If you build a house with your own two hands, should you not pay property tax on it ?
The reason we have property taxes is because maintaining the environment around the house costs money. There's no roads and sewers and schools for books.
Also, a patent takes space by disallowing me to use the same kind of invention (even if I came up with it independently). And a copyright sometimes stops me from being able to use a "cultural common". They most definitely take space. And real estate property taxes are often supplemented by "road maintenance levies". They don't directly support the property's infrastructure when you really look into it.
Now when it comes to copyright enforcement, 99.99% of the copyrighted material out there is never formally published. It's source code, it's email, it's creative works produced and shared but never curated or packaged. How can you possibly tax all of that?
If only want to use the tax as a way to make sure orphaned works can be shared, and patent trolls become unprofitable. I believe that an IP tax can help both. I think it is essential to force proper valuation of IP, and I think tying it to recovery (upside) and taxes (downside) is likely to give a proper evaluation.
It is not my intention to try to tax your own painting on your living room. I assume, by default, anything not listed, is valued at $0 for that year.
Do you understand that, regardless for copyrights or patents, your IP is not enforceable unless you can afford the court action?
There's a solution to orphaned works: Reduce copyright to something like 25-50 years (plus life of creator?) and allow for one renewal, which requires a filing fee, for another 25-50 years. That's it. Suddenly all these orphaned works are liberated because it's not worth it for people to file.
Taxing based on valuation is absolutely, monstrously ridiculous. Many people write short fiction they publish online. Are you going to suggest they need to get an appraisal on their book, and then pay taxes on it? How many millions of people are going to review this and ensure that everything's tallied up correctly.
Orphaned works are a problem, but taxing them is not a solution.
I keep repeating (and you keep ignoring) that I want no such thing, except when they expect damages for copyright infringement.
Taxing based on valuation is what is effectively done for every kind of property. If IP is property, there is no reason it should be exempt. And if it isn't property, it's about time we stop treating it as such.
The implication is that if someone decides to copy it, your claim for damages in court is based on that $0. But if your intent is to keep a private copy in your living room without the willingness to share with the public who gave you the privilege of copyright in the first place, perhaps that still remains fair.
Today, someone thinks of an idea, patents it and estimates its worth at $100M. Someone else develops the same idea and assigns a value of $20K. That's the error bar TODAY.
Inventor has no incentive for realistic estimate - they will always overestimate (no penalty for that). An infringer has no incentive for a realistic estimate (no additional penalty for that if he loses in court).
An ip tax will decrease the error bars by forcing the patent owner to pay for overestimates.
If your property has value, then you should pay property tax. If it has no value, you cannot claim damages if someone 'steals' said property since it wasn't worth anything. You can't have your cake and eat it. If you start taxing imaginary property, this will force IP owners to consider wether their IP has actual value or not and act accordingly.
If you own a unused property, in comparison, shows you have significant funds
I propose that the value of IP for tax purposes is owner assigned. If you have no money to pay the tax, just declare $1. The catch is, that would make you ineligible to recover much more than that in the case of infringement.
As far as poor people, it changes little to none. But it grounds patent valuation, which are now arbitrary.
For example I invent and patent the widget and assign a $1B valuation to the invention. Apple violated my patent, manufactures the widget and sells $100M. Should I sue, my potential damages have nothing to do with the $1B valuation I made up but with the damages I suffered as a result of Apple violating my patent.
Alternatively I write a book and slap $1 valuation, because I assume there is no market for my writing or to avoid the big tax until I make it big. JK Rowling Violated my copyright and slaps her name on my book and sells millions of copies, again my damages have zero relation to the valuation I created for the IP.
The other part, about damages, is a grey area today. It is up to the jury/judge to decide how much value to assign to the infringement, but they start from arbitrary statements - which is why Oracle can claim 9 lines are worth $5B even though they've been giving them away for free for a long time.
If you break through - then you'll have proof of value, be able to pay the tax, and sue/recover accordingly.