When I got one of those electric unicycles, I got mine from Inventist (Solowheel), I was shocked to learn how badly the company got ripped off in China. Since they were fabricated there, they copied the thing to a tee and hundeds of companies started making the same thing, some copies bad and dangerous, others improved. To summarize, the original company, Inventist, was attemped a mafia style takeover, I think they were offered a few mil USD which they refused. The gyro mechanism was based on some patented technology from Segway and eventually one of the chinese companies took over Segway.. Real story:( Things coming from China are now cheap but after they eliminate all the competitors they’ll name the price. Of course, US is not an angel either, they’re the ones to open the pandora’s box to cheap chinese labor, moved all their factories there to gain the short term profits by eliminating the cost of their own workers.
wait, they bought the company with the pattent? that's exactly what american capitalism is about!
apple bought fingerworks(?) and sat on top of their patents, refusing all license requests, until 20(?) years later they started working on the iphone. How exactly is the chinese abuse of patents any different?
you can't cry for solowheel without also cursing apple for the death of palm pilot and all other portables before the iphone (not to mention the awesome keyboard+touchpad fingerworks was delivering the months apple shut them down)
Apple is just doing what makes them money, and the Chinese company that bought Segway is also just doing what makes it money.
The real issue is a patent system that allows someone to refuse to license a patent. That goes against the whole point of patents. You're supposed to be getting the innovative technology out there in exchange for the right to royalties. If technological progress has not been furthered by the publicization of your patent (by other companies building novel devices that they otherwise wouldn't have, using what they learned from your patent), then you don't really have a patent. You have a trade secret that the government is helping you protect for some reason.
Patents should require licensing to keep them alive in about the same way that trademarks require defending to keep them alive.
>The real issue is a patent system that allows someone to refuse to license a patent.
One solution (suggested in the book "Radical Markets" - http://radicalmarkets.com/ ) is pretty straightforward: charge a yearly tax of around 7% on the patent equal to whatever the patent owner claims it is worth, with the caveat that they MUST sell the entire patent to whoever is willing to pay the claimed "value" of said patent - this prevents under-pricing AND over-pricing and ensures maximal societal benefit of said government-granted monopoly.
The book goes into a lot more detail, and the authors have good solutions for the more obvious arguments against such a scheme.
