FOREWORD
The patent system is supposedly to encourage inventors to solve societys' problems, by granting them a limited monopoly on their inventions.
It is a source of great concern that those who can kick a football or hit a golf ball well can achieve incomes of many millions of dollars, (10 of them get a million $U.S. PER WEEK, or more!); while those who are trying to solve the planets problems continually have to fight and scrape and argue with their banks and CC cos, often watching their projects go backwards, etc, etc; mostly just hanging on, in order to survive.
If one of the above achieves success, it only means that someone won, someone lost (which was to be the result, anyway!!); if the other achieves success, it may well mean the survival of civilisation.
The latter is currently looking (quite) - VERY - doubtful.*
On top of that, inventors have huge expenses, of up to a million dollars if they wish to protect their ideas - irrespective of the inventors experience, ability to negotiate the patent system, the stage of development of the invention, and the nature of the invention (e.g. a new drug can take many years to gain approval; RF spectrum may face similar delays). All of these can shorten the patents viability; patents have been known to expire before the invention could be commercialised. Had Da Vinci acquired a patent on his helicopter - it would have expired some 400 years before it could be built!
A ‘cash crunch' at any point during the patent process can mean permanent loss of all patent rights.
Then, if the inventor does get a patent, but finds it is being infringed, he faces further huge expenses, in order to stop the counterfeiting!
Scientists, announcing their (virgin) discoveries, often find that the very act of their announcement IS THAT WHICH DESTROYS ANY IP RIGHT they might have had in the knowledge from their discoveries.
This has resulted in a situation where many significant discoveries and inventions are 'left rusting behind the shed', or even just never make it to paper; the ‘once bitten’ inventor now fully aware of the trauma involved in development and commercialization, etc, but particularly in establishing IP.
The above situation is incredible, especially given the problems now facing the planet.
- THE PURPOSE OF THIS ACT -
'To ensure maximum chance of success for Inventions, and to allow Inventors to devote all assets and energies to realising successful Inventions thereby helping to solve the planets problems, minimal demands shall be levied on Inventors and their assets by the patent process before commercialization, other than timely lodgement of a provisional and / or complete specification.'
The following ‘One Dollar Patent Act’ addresses these issues.
Stuart Saunders.
reform@IPROAG.org, stuart21@mac.com.
* I have been inventing for over 50 years, and on climate change solutions for over 40 years - since before it was called Climate Change (back then it was called Limits to Growth; we did not know just which limits would impact first. That problem has now been solved).
Success rate; about the same as for my other inventions; a few %.
Hence, IPROAG.
