Earlier quoted context omitted.
What novel ideas did the One-Click patent cover? Seriously. I think we're overpaying. And we're not paying the actual creative types. And we're not paying for what's really useful, just what receives the paperwork and has enough lawyers to attack based on it. If we really wanted to do this right we'd have a big vote for the people who made things (even textbooks, etc, like Knuth) that made the biggest difference in t…
You're describing a patent system that functions as an achievement award. But that's not the purpose of a patent. Knuth already published his best work without the incentive of a patent. The extra award would not get him to publish a new volume of TAOCP any faster. Think of it this way: to function as intended, the patent system has to make it economically less attractive to closely hold inventions as trade secrets.…
The main problem with the idea is that it eliminates negotiations between self interested parties as the means for value estimation. "Voting" on the most valuable works is quite simply a terrible idea. With copyrightable works, we could probably have some technological way (think DRM) of tracking popularity / frequency of use. But for patents, I'm not sure how it would work. I suppose that as long as you make it where the total tax levied on an individual to fund this system doesn't depend on how many or which works they used (though it could depend broadly on what they produce, what industry they are in, etc), they won't have an incentive to hide what they used. It's not at all clear to me that the difficulties inherent in such an approach are greater than those in current approach (which can be charitably describe as "a mess").