I gave a talk on intellectual property at TEDx at Goodenough College in London in February 2013. I focused on patents, how they have fallen out of step with the modern pace of innovation, and as a result are now causing more problems for innovation than they solve. I’d love to hear your responses!

Watch it on Youtube here.

Archived Comments

April 22, 2013 at 5:06 pm, Dan Callahan says:

Sean:

I think your idea of granting patent terms in proportion to the investment made is a good one. Another thought would be to require patent holders to be spending some amount of money on research and development, effectively shutting down patent troll organizations.

Dan

April 23, 2013 at 11:19 am, Sean Blanchfield says:

Hi Dan,

Thanks for that – it’s perhaps a simpler and more elegant solution. One challenge would be setting an appropriate R&D threshold. A startup might legitimately invent something on a budget of $20K. However, a firm such as Intellectual Ventures would have no difficulty budgeting $20K if it gave them license to troll.

It may also be easy to evade: Here in Ireland there are significant tax breaks for multinational companies who perform R&D activities. It’s a well known joke how heavily abused this is, with major international firms somehow managing to classify a wide range of regular business activities as R&D.

Sean