{"id":9744,"date":"2018-04-25T18:33:39","date_gmt":"2018-04-26T00:33:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/?p=9744"},"modified":"2018-04-25T18:45:33","modified_gmt":"2018-04-26T00:45:33","slug":"article-suggestion-the-tax-implications-of-oil-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/?p=9744","title":{"rendered":"Article suggestion:  The tax implications of Oil States"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Now that we have been told that patents are &#8220;public franchises,&#8221; it might be useful for someone to discuss the tax implications of the<em> Oil States<\/em> holding. Does the holding of <em>Oil States<\/em> require any revision to the tax code? Can a &#8220;public franchise&#8221; be taxed? \u00a0Can an owner of a patent be taxed for both &#8220;public franchise&#8221; purposes and &#8220;personal property&#8221; purposes? \u00a0Do any companies with large patent portfolios now owe back taxes for failing to pay a &#8220;public franchise&#8221; tax? Are any owed a refund? \u00a0Are some states better for &#8220;public franchise&#8221; tax purposes than other states? \u00a0The Court notes: \u00a0&#8220;Finally, our decision should not be misconstrued as suggesting that patents are not property for purposes of the Due Process Clause or the Takings Clause.&#8221; \u00a0What about the taxing and spending clause?<\/p>\n<p>Beyond the tax questions, are there any other complications caused by deeming a patent a &#8220;public franchise&#8221;? \u00a0Residency? \u00a0Nationality? \u00a0Restraints on alienation?<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>Totally unrelated issue &#8212; if you can&#8217;t patent an &#8220;abstract idea&#8221; because it is\u00a0&#8220;part of the storehouse of knowledge of all men &#8230; free to all men and reserved exclusively to none,&#8221; should you be able to tax it?<\/p>\n<p>If (a) the FCC grants a public franchise by granting a party sole use to a portion of the radio spectrum and (b) the radio spectrum is a natural phenomenon, is the FCC granting a public franchise to a natural phenomenon? \u00a0Why should the FCC be able to grant public franchises on natural phenomenon if the USPTO cannot?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Now that we have been told that patents are &#8220;public franchises,&#8221; it might be useful for someone to discuss the tax implications of the Oil States holding. Does the holding of Oil States require any revision to the tax code? Can a &#8220;public franchise&#8221; be taxed? \u00a0Can an owner of a patent be taxed for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9744"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9744"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9747,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9744\/revisions\/9747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}