Re: Do patents really foster innovation?

From: Peter C. McCluskey (pcm@rahul.net)
Date: Mon Mar 17 2003 - 16:27:03 MST

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     hal@finney.org (Hal Finney) writes:
    >Nevertheless I wonder if some other incentive compatible mechanism
    >could be devised which would let people share data directly, and avoid
    >this sort of blacklist effect where a few unlucky people are shut out
    >from particular works. Maybe consumers could vote in some way for
    >their favorite pieces of information, and direct the tax revenues to
    >the creators. This might also allow people to vote after sampling the
    >product rather than beforehand, which would give a more accurate estimate
    >of the value.
    >
    >Maybe you could use a Groves and Ledyard mechanism to set the value of the
    >total pool of money to be disbursed to information creators, and then a
    >simpler voting system like this could control how the money is divided.

     Robin mentioned long ago on the altinst list a proposal by Michael Kremer
    for patent buyouts by governments or charitable organzations, who would
    then put the patents into the public domain.
     The value of the patents would be determined by auctions. To encourage
    honest prices in the auctions, some of the patents would be sold to the
    highest bidder. Search for "Michael Kremer patent buyouts" to get more
    info about this.
     Except for the problem of paying for all this, it sounds like a simple and
    significant improvement over the current situation. I'm still trying to
    figure out whether the Groves and Ledyard mechanism provides a good way
    of paying for it.

    -- 
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    Peter McCluskey          | 
    http://www.rahul.net/pcm | 
    


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