If your patent ever gets overturned in the future then you will have to pay back all the fees that you have collected under your patent + a 50% fine.<p>The reason why I think this would work is because it puts the onus of really good prior art searches on the patent taker.<p>Now it is basically 'whatever you got away with', and if your patent gets voided after years of litigation there is no retroactive punishment for patenting something non-novel in the first place.<p>So there is lots of sloppy searching and lots of blustering with bogus patents.<p>If that change were adopted you'd <i>gladly</i> pay for a bogus patent because you'd get it back with a nice interest after you finish killing the patent.
A simplistic proposal for patent reform