Terry Harris wrote:

> I would suggest that patents are filed with a claimed value. A value which
> represents the effort and costs behind the invention. The claimed value
> would be open to challenge and settled in court if need be. The patent
> holder could license or sell rights granted by the patent for whatever deal
> they can get but they would also be required to sell rights equal to their
> own to anyone paying the claimed value.

This has a fatal flaw. The pharmaceutical industry is a classic example but so is the consumer electronics industry.

The flaw is many developments fail, perhaps as many as 80% of the innovative developments fail to generate enough revenue to pay the development costs. Companies that do innovation as a business know about this statistical mix of profitable and loss
developments. Innovative companies stay in business as long as the mix is positive.

Protecting innovation is important to encourage the innovation process. There are a lot of manufacturing and publishing model businesses that once the development is done product replication and distribution is a tiny fraction of the creation costs.
Innovation in most industries requires a significant commitment of resources and time before there is any indication of the likely outcome.

There is a reason that the music industry now has a significant revenue stream from touring productions and a significant part of software tool costs are embedded in the pricing models of silicon.

Regards,

--
Walter Banks
Byte Craft Limited
http://www.bytecraft.com



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