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2) In the end this up and coming company then proceeds to strive for continual improvement investing their funds into R&D. Now the older companies can effectively sit on their heels and let the new patents pour in. It's not a great long term strategy but if someone else is going to put in the work and you already have the "Brand power" to coast why wouldn't you.
This is the outcome I would expect from the given example of a company choosing to leave; as opposed to them paying to use Patents they didn't deem worthy on the off chance the next development is better.
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The issue here isn't so much whether the incumbents would get to "coast" on the back of the newcomers' R&D, should the newcomers even decide to invest in their own R&D. In fact, the way the BDPL is currently set up actually incentivizes the opposite the newcomers would be a lot better off simply leaching off the incumbents' patents and resources. And if the incumbents decide to simply stop developing because of the burden of spoon-feeding the other BDPL users, everyone loses, because the entire BDPL pool of developers and manufacturers would grind to a halt. They would all then very soon be overtaken by non-BDPL developers and manufacturers. In other words, it would be far better for the incumbents to have never joined the BDPL in the first place.
The issue here instead is that should any company choose to leave the BDPL, they remain obliged to license their patents to BDPL users for free, while the BDPL users would then be allowed to impose additional terms on the leaving companies for their continued use of BDPL patents. This isn't just unfair, it's extortion.