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BGonline.org Forums
Better criteria for patents?
Posted By: Tom Keith In Response To: copyrighting @ T. Keith (Timothy Chow)
Date: Thursday, 16 August 2012, at 7:39 p.m.
I have sometimes wondered if there could be a better process to determine what is patentable. Here is a (very) rough idea of the sort of thing I'm thinking about:
Company A decides they need an algorithm to perform some task. They do research to see what is available and discover the best algorithm that's been published runs in X amount of time. Company A needs an algorithm that runs in X/4 amount of time. So they publish specific requirements for what they need and offer (say) one million dollars to anyone who can come up with such an algorithm within one year.
If there is exactly one winner, that winner collects the one million dollar prize money. In exchange, Company A gets exclusive use of the algorithm (just as if it were patented). However, Company A must license the algorithm to anyone else who wants to use it. (Company A can charge as much as they want to each licensee, but the total license fees collected cannot exceed $2 million, twice what Company A paid originally. This is their profit for the risk they took in offering the prize.)
If there is more than one winner, the one million dollars is split among all the winners. However, any of the winners may opt out of receiving their share of the prize money. (They would do this if they wanted to use their own algorithm without paying a license fee to Company A. They get to do it because they put forward their algorithm before the one year time limit passed.)
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