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Re:Economist: Would the world be better off with fewer patents? by mikeash on Friday August 31, 2012 @10:44PM (#4462503)
How about exponentially increasing renewal fees? $1 for the first year, $2 for the second, $4 for the first, etc. If the patent is valuable then the owner can keep it going longer, but it will still become unsustainably expensive before too long, and huge portfolios of long-lived patents would be impractical.
Re:Economist: Would the world be better off with fewer patents? by danielweber on Saturday September 01, 2012 @01:54AM (#4462787)
I once suggested this for copyright terms, but someone pointed out a big problem: what is the unit that that "$1" fee covers?

I can write an entire book under 1 copyright, easily keeping it going for a decade with your regime. But a photographer produces hundreds or thousands of copyrighted works a year.

You might try doing your regime with the number of claims, and the company can decide how many to keep fresh, but it then leads to weird edge-cases like keeping a few things secret for now to patent later -- which is the opposite of what the patent system intends. Patents encourage people to publish their inventions for others to study, in exchange for limited exclusivity to market and/or use their invention.

Re:Economist: Would the world be better off with fewer patents? by mikeash on Saturday September 01, 2012 @06:55AM (#4463352)
Yeah, I don't think it works for copyrights, but patents already seem to have this solved. There's already a set unit for them, and they already cost a substantial amount of money (unlike copyright, which is currently free).

Keeping things secret now to patent them later is a problem, but no worse than it is now, I think. The same incentives apply to the exponential scheme as to the current hard limit. You'd keep the requirement to file within a certain time of the first public reveal, so you'd have to move quickly if you wanted to patent anything you were actually going to use.