A FUSE loopback filesystem with COW semantics for hard links that could be used with a tweaked SVN client to remove the 2x disk space penalty you pay for keeping a pristine copy of everything and being able to do local diff?
Or a digibox which detected the “ad break beginning”/”ad break ending” signals that British channels send out for VCRs to use, and blanked the screen during the ads?
Or a law which said that patents were non-transferable? So that if a particular company or person invented something, they would be the only ones ever who could licence it, or sue for infringement? This would make patents more likely to be used to protect innovation and far less like a tradeable asset which let you sue your competitors.
Why don’t you take a look at svk? It seem to solve that problem, and few others too :-)
If you can’t transfer a patent to another company, you just buy the company that owns it, or you just sign an exclusive sublicenseable license, instead of transfering the patent itself.
Also, some real innovators like to sell their patents. If your an inventive type, it’s not unreasonable to form a company that invents things, and then pitches the patents around to companies that will expliot them on a highest bidder type basis so that you can pay off the debts you incurred inventing the thing in the first place.