On Crowdfunding Intellectual Property
Wired, one of the preeminent technologically oriented online news sources, has a fascinating article arguing that we need a crowdfunding platform for patents. Writer Samuel Arbesman opens by citing two impressive statistics. One is that every year the citizens of the US spend $40 billion to support technological innovation and research (about two-thirds of this $40 billion comes from the federal government). The other, is that 65% of invention disclosures remain unlicensed and unused every year. Though many innovations are being created, just over one-third of these innovations are shared with the public and some are never even revealed. Now, of course, not every invention can or even should be patented and Arbesman is quick to point out that there is the strong possibility that a good chunk of the unshared innovations might prove to be worthless. However, the fact that this information isn’t even disclosed means that potentially world changing innovations are being withheld from the public because the corporations who found these discoveries can’t think of any practical uses for them. A reminder: there is a difference between a discovery having practical uses and the corporation that discovered it being able to think of practical applications. Just because the corporations that currently hold these discoveries and keep them secret might not know what to do with them, doesn’t mean that others won’t.
Now, the reason so much IP falls by the wayside basically comes down to two simple reasons. One is that the patent process is fairly lengthy and corporations are unwilling to go through it if they see no practical use for their invention and the other is that companies like to hoard their discoveries on the off chance that they may some day be useful to a future patent. Arbesman rightfully points out that this is a waste of the money that American citizens are pouring into technological research and argues that we need a way to democratize the invention process. He is also well aware that democratizing the property itself might prove problematic, so he argues that it is only the process that needs changing, saying “Not democratizing the IP itself — institutions should still own and generate profits from the intellectual property they’ve created — but democratizing the ways in which we allow this IP to be discovered and licensed.” This idea is strangely appealing, Arbesman is quite persuasive in laying out exactly how allowing a crowdfunding element to IP patenting will create a better sense of community, allow IP to have more widespread appeal as soon as it is patented, and to get average citizens invested in technological innovation. Government has long promised and advocated that transparency should be a prime tenet of bureaucracy but we still have yet to see widespread transparency anywhere (as the recent uncovering of the NSA scandal has proven). There are of course, some problems with Arbesman’s ideals for a crowdfunded IP site. Most notably, there are exceptionally few specifics as to how such a plan could be implemented and Arbesman himself admits that there have been previous sites that have tried similar approaches but have not experienced any serious measure of success.
Another significant problem is that we don’t currently know that any of the hidden innovations are worthwhile, there is only the possibility that they are worthwhile. It’s still entirely possible that these corporations have not released these technologies because they truly are worthless. However, Arbesman’s article presents an intriguing way in which currently intellectual property procedures could be shaken up, possibly for the better. In an industry that is all about finding, discovering, and protecting new products and procedures, doesn’t it make sense that eventually the industry itself should evolve in the same way as the products it protects? Certainly Arbesman understands what the proper spirit of the IP industry should be even if he doesn’t have all of the specifics on how we will get there yet.
Kevin James
Intern at
JAFARI LAW GROUP®, INC.