(Mar/2004)< Previous | Home | Up | Table of Contents | Next >
Soft Uploading:
Note: It turns out that this scheme is not quite feasible
due to the 20-year limit of patent life under current laws. (Mar/2004)
It is obvious that uploading will generate huge amounts of income in the future. What is needed is a strategy to "channel" future income to the present.
In order to do that, one needs to guarantee that substantial amounts of future income can be collected. Therefore we need a centralized organization (eg a research consortium) of companies interested in uploading technologies. In theory, the purpose of the consortium is to consolidate and then redistribute the future income stream.
Most people will agree the ETA (estimated time to arrival) of uploading is at least a few decades, but patents, under current laws, can only last for 20 years. One common practice is to file patents continuously around a core technology and thus maintain virtual control over it.
As IP is established, its value can be used for research funding. Initially IP tokens are issued to researchers as they make specific contributions to the set of uploading technologies. Later on these tokens can be traded publicly (liquidity).
Income forecasting will facilitate IP securitization.
Standard economic methods as well as some cost-estimation models developed by NASA may be useful to this end. This will enable us to decide whether the gradual uploading approach is economically feasible or not.
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Jan/2004 Yan King Yin