Pirate Congress 2018/Motions/Policy and Platform/Patent System Reform

= Amendments to the "A streamlined patent system" section of the Education and Innovation policy =

Add the following section to the Preamble:
Declared Value System

The patent system should reflect the potential public benefit of ending a patent monopoly, and provide that option via a market system. A balanced approach is to use a Declared Value System, whereby the patent holder must declare a liberation value for their patent. If another party (including the government) were willing to pay to permanently abolish the patent, the patent holder would receive the liberation value as compensation. The patent registration fees would be set as a percentage of the liberation value (e.g. 0.2% p.a) and could be escalated over time. Patent holders could adjust their liberation value in response to buy-out offers, provided they pay the difference in fees from the previous value. This system would make it unprofitable to sit idly on patents, or to buy up large amounts of patents to stifle competition. Consequently, the allocation efficiency of patent monopolies would be improved. This ensures that the public receives a fair proportion of the monopoly rents created by the patent, innovators are rewarded, useful patents are more successfully commercialised, and monopolies reflect a true cost to the market. To offset the potential cost escalation on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) of higher patent fees, additional revenue could be hypothecated into SME legal aid to reduce legal costs of defending against patent challenges and breach of patent.

Add the following section to the Policy Text:
Restructure patent fees
 * Reduce the initial threshold for claim fees, and increase claim fees for applications with a large number of claims.
 * Initiate a review into patent fee structure - including the feasibility of adopting a Declared Value System to replace the existing cost-recovery based patent fee system.

Implement the Productivity Commission's recommendations to improve the patent legal system
 * Introduce a specialist IP list in the Federal Circuit Court, encompassing features similar to those of the United Kingdom Intellectual Property Enterprise Court:
 * Limit trials to two days
 * Caps on costs and damages
 * Small claims procedure
 * Expand the jurisdiction of the Federal Circuit Court to hear all IP matters, and provide the resources necessary to maintain existing resolution times.
 * Assess the costs and benefits of these reforms five years after implementation

Add the following subitem to the "Abolish patents on pharmaceutical drugs" item of the Policy Text:

 * Improve reporting requirements
 * Improve reporting requirements around public funding spent on pharmaceutical development
 * Improve pharmaceutical sector reporting to the ACCC to prevent anticompetitive behaviour

= References =