It is no worse than the existing system. If you are not aware, filing a patent costs a few thousand dollars, and after receiving a patent, you have to file "maintenance fees" which easily total tens of thousands through the lifetime of a patent.
Same incentive exists today to grant patents (government makes much less money from rejected patent than from granted patent), and to prevent them from expiring (collect more maintenance fees).
Hell, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (affectionately known as "The Mickey Mouse Protection Act") which extended copyright retroactively from 70 to 95 years showed that congress is all too willing to do that to help their friends in the media industry, without even requesting payments; it is definitely NOT the lack of "intellectual property tax" that stops congress from increasing the term of patents (or copyrights).
Existing maintenance and filing fees clearly have not been enough to prevent large numbers of frivolous patents. Any IP tax would have to be quite a bit larger than fees existing now to be effective.
I read somewhere that although Russia has serious problems with alcoholism, public programs trying to fight it have been handicapped because a large part of govt. revenues come from a liqour tax. I think it is at least worth considering this outcome before creating any kind of 'sin tax'.
> it gives the government an incentive to grant patents and to prevent them from expiring.
as a downside to IP tax, when said downside already exists with said system, and is not made worse by my proposal. Then you say:
> Existing maintenance and filing fees clearly have not been enough to prevent large numbers of frivolous patents.
But this does not support your earlier assertion - the existing fees actually _support_ a large number of frivolous patents, because the value of a patent is (potentially) infinite, whereas the cost is known, and not prohibitive. The existing fees were NOT designed to curb patents -- they were designed to make it profitable for the government.
> Any IP tax would have to be quite a bit larger than fees existing now to be effective."
My proposal addresses this perfectly. It puts the "cost of carry" of a patent in direct proportion to its value. It is not a "sin tax", it is a "use tax" - if you use the legal system (courts, customs) to protect your profits, you pay according to these profits.
The end result is likely to be much fewer well written patents which are non-trivial and (relatively) easy to defend in court, which will be strategically selected by the grantees. Furthermore, it puts older and newer patents on equal grounds, unlike other suggestions of "from now on ..."
It is probably possible to balance the filing fees (because of fewer patents) and the IP tax so that it doesn't reduce the government intake; This might not actually be at 1%/year, but rather at 2%/year or 0.5%/year (or some other number), so the liquor thing might not be relevant -- although I agree, in general, that the government is itself a "fee / tax" junkee and therefore cannot be trusted to do the right thing.
Same incentive exists today to grant patents (government makes much less money from rejected patent than from granted patent), and to prevent them from expiring (collect more maintenance fees).
Hell, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (affectionately known as "The Mickey Mouse Protection Act") which extended copyright retroactively from 70 to 95 years showed that congress is all too willing to do that to help their friends in the media industry, without even requesting payments; it is definitely NOT the lack of "intellectual property tax" that stops congress from increasing the term of patents (or copyrights).