China recently circulated a draft regulation regarding the use of patents in Chinese national standards. The regulation demands that for patents to be eligible for incorporation in standards, they must be made irrevocably available royalty free or for a nominal fee. ... The negative impact on innovators could be severe.
And I responded thus:
You confuse “innovators” with “patent holders”. I do not know if that is just a linguist tic from your field, or an intentional confusion.
Patents are almost never created or used to protect innovation. Companies that actually innovate and make things do so because they have a culture of innovation and execution, and they hold patents only to ante into the game of Mexican Standoff against other holders of patents.
The only people harmed by this proposal are patent trolls, and by companies who think that spending effort lobbying their patents into various national and international standards (especially doing so surreptitiously), and then riding the gravy train, instead of actually spending money on actual research, development, innovation, and execution.
Somehow, I don’t feel that patent trolls and patent surprisers deserve any protection or sympathy, and I hope that proposals like this one actually smash their business “model” as the parasite it is.
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