> Meaning what? Claw back the ideas ...

If something is so obviously wrong then perhaps take a minute to consider that your interpretation isn't what the other party intended?

If I pay you not to do something and then you breach the contract I can terminate the agreement and seek damages. Ditto if I pay you to repeatedly do something and then at some point you fail to do it. So if I pay you a recurring fee to publish all your research on a given topic and then you fail to make good on that I can seek damages, right? Now what if I paid you a lump sum up front? Now what if I licensed a patent to you in place of that lump sum? What if instead of a patent it was the right to make use of a piece of software?

> I honestly have no idea what damages you could claim from not publishing research.

Aside from whatever was stipulated for breach of contract I expect it would be extremely situational. I agree that you'd probably want to stipulate a penalty ahead of time. The original idea was a two sentence joke after all ...

> Not sure why you added the word "pay" to your clauses

Because contracts involve consideration and payment is easy to understand and reason about. FOSS software licenses obviously substitute "right to use the code" for "payment".

> A non-compete clause stops you from working in a very specific field. Your proposal has an undefined reach. What counts as research? What counts as "related"? It would seem that if I agree to such a contract, my entire life, both private and professional, after reading the paper is covered by the contract, and anything I do might come under scrutiny.

This is incredibly contrived. You could ask the equivalent about a non-compete. The reach is whatever is defined in the contract that both parties agreed to. If the contract stipulates something overly broad then possibly a judge would invalidate it. This is business 101.

> It's definitely not obvious that the terms are legally valid, but it's ambiguous enough that people don't want to test it.

An assertion entirely without evidence from my perspective. I'm going to assume that all the lawyers who have sure left me with the impression that it would be a bad idea to violate it know what they're talking about.

AI's top startups are barely publishing their research