Defend Innovation: How to Fix Our Broken Patent System (2015)
Here&#x27;s an idea I&#x27;ve seen before that makes sense to me:<p>You have property tax; You have (so called) intellectual property. Why don&#x27;t you have &quot;intellectual property tax&quot;?<p>Similar to e.g. how property tax works in the US, you would pay something like 1% of the value of your &quot;property&quot; in taxes each year -- and when you sue, you can only sue for how much of that &quot;value&quot; was taken away from you (with perhaps treble damages or something). Then, all of a sudden, it&#x27;s not enough to claim that your copyrights are worth $18B to sue Google for $9B - you have to have actually paid $180M&#x2F;year or so in taxes in the last few years to make that claim.<p>Devil is in the details, of course, but if &quot;intellectual property&quot; is property, it should be taxed like one.