Send your FairIP to FairIP@AWEIA.org  for publication.

Good topic, Grant. Thanks.  
I will enter this thread more than once as time unfolds.

• Concerning Big Energy:  
  There might be present an opportunity to enter an era of tethered aviation that finds people grouping to back methods on merit of effectiveness. Especially in deomocracies, there might be an opportunity for people  to get serious about clean energy while sending awards to inventors whether or not patents were present.  The Internet may help here; continue the Google effort to get all literature up and searchable. Identify all AWE tech; date the tech steps by innovators in and out of patent instructions.  Have academia explore merit. Let the people vote; award the involved innovators. Let the people invest in Cleantech. Get unstuck from oil and coal.    The AWECS patents of the 1970-1980 era are already strong enough to alter the Big Energy world; will some nation be wise enough to simply do the right thing and build, fly, and be blessed by already-gifted-to-humanity AWE tech? 
   
• Concerning sport and hobby AWECS:
  Let anything play: free tech, FairIP, CoopIP, CoolIP (I like, Grant, what might have been a typo. Cooperative IP is CoopIP.  But you presented "CoolIP" which could be just neat cool IP).  Expired patents, and fast-acting entrepreneurs often win (I buy many toys made by manufacturers that are using expired patents; they seem to be making a profit from using expired tech combined with creative fresh engineering, marketing, sales, distribution).  Millions of dollars are being made right now in AWE by kite makers and sellers on top of expired patented tech as well as non-patented public-domain tech.

http://utrf.tennessee.edu/faculty/Impact_of_PD%202-16-09.pdf
speaks to some of Grant's points.

Great Grant topic!  

And thanks, Grant,  for introducing a new term that is bound to stick!  Like it:  CoolIP.
Now we have three going:

FairIP    Award the innovator. Use Google search to find the innovator. Award her or him, if you use the innovation. Dare to share!

CoopIP   Cooperative IP for cooperations, collaborations, collectives, patent pools,  ...

CoolIP   Really neat and "cool" IP getting someone's special attention! 

I will enter several times the thread you started here, Grant.   Good topic.

On topic: for Big Energy, will people in democracies act strongly on AWECS effectiveness merit beyond the inventors battle? 
Tethered aviation Manhattan Project?  The U.S. government had rights to 1970s and 1980s AWEC patented tech enough to install a
wind replacement for Big Oil; such tech is in public domain. Will the people of U.S. act now while awarding creative builders and operators to install Big Wind?

JoeF

Grant,

Thanks for the thoughtful post. We should debug fairIP/coopIP as needed to prevent your nightmare scenario. Note that the Flash of Genius movie is about a small-patent-holder/inventor robbed by Ford Motors. FairIP/coopIP, on the other hand, is an EXPERIMENTAL way for little-folk to avoid the "wrecking struggle" of patent war. Such disclosure gives up patent rights, replacing them with a voluntary "honor system". The sanction reserved is a right to ridicule & boycott any VC effort to commercialize key ideas without cooperative relationships with creators.

Yes, the Idol Bashing & Selsam-Santos debates are tedious, but they do weed out the less diligent & easily offended from the forum. I have very high hopes for Joby Energy's transparency & agility, especially when they openly stumble & laugh; but Google/Makani has hidden shortcomings still unclear to outside observers. Let the business press continue to fawn over marketing-driven AWE while smart investment carefully weighs our inside critiques,

daveS

Grant, you wrote-                                 
"what if some big ugly corporation was using your idea for free for military uses and a lawyer came up to and said he could get a multimillion dollar settlement which you could then donate to the charity of your choice. Some people would be tempted to break their voluntary promise of placing it in the public domain. This is how corporate lawyers see the problem. So, they would advise their boards steer clear of the whole mess by not using any IP that's ownership was at all ambiguous."

Any lawyer can figure out how to make friendly mutually binding fairIP/coopIP agreements, its simple contract law. Without such a contract a creator still only gets a year to repent (only) in the US, so your steer-clear-or-get-sued fear is not open-ended. The key intent of our defining a critical mass of coolIP is so that those of good heart can deliver AWE to the needful without fear of the coercive patent abuse as seen in global pharmaceuticals.

Will you be paying "Bimodal-Kite" royalties? ;^)

=======================================

Here's a DRAFT patch against AWE fairIP/coopIP overclaiming abuse-

Disagreements over AWE fairIP/coopIP can be brought by any interested party for arbitration by an AWEIA Peer Jury.

The AWEIA Peer Jury shall be free of direct conflicts of interest.

A failed Claimant of fairIP/coopIP under the AWEIA process shall desist from ridicule or boycott of an alleged abuser.

Right of appeal to a new Peer Jury is accorded by AWEIA Board as an evolving understanding of any dispute warrants.

=========================================

NOTE: FairIP/CoopIP is not created for military use. If "Cool IP" scares "ugly" corporate boards away from militarization of AWE, that's really cool. Cleantech greenwash renewable-based "endless war" is a legitmate fear. An AWE arms race is already initiated by US military-industrialist profiteers, which will surely trigger the Chinese Regime to simply out-manufacture Daddy Warbucks. As Wayne German first called for, there should be a global ban on military AWE, just like the ban on military bio-engineering. Companies who base a biz plan on militarization without considering the risk of a ban may lose.