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The US Supreme Court is hearing a case about patent law’s “exhaustion doctrine”

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Re: The US Supreme Court is hearing a case about patent law’s “exhaustion doctrine”

#51

Post by clarkmoody »

zebrafish wrote: post #17

Without the guarantee of a patented marked up drug, would drug companies waste the same amount of money that they currently do on R&D? I'm of the opinion that we would see a major slow down in drug innovation without patents. R&D is very wasteful and expensive. Patents prevent competition for a short period of time to help the business recoup losses from failed experiments and to deliver profits which serve as an inc…

R&D is ultra-expensive in-part because of government regulation. So the government is playing both sides of the ball:

+ Pile up mountains of red tape through the FDA

+ Provide patent protections for those with enough money to wade through the red tape

+ Give R&D grants to companies with taxpayer money to take up the slack in their budget

So since R&D is so expensive, only large companies can afford it, which is just fine for them: it keeps out competitors.

Re: The US Supreme Court is hearing a case about patent law’s “exhaustion doctrine”

#53

Post by zebrafish »

dickbasedregex wrote: post #22
zebrafish wrote: post #17

Without the guarantee of a patented marked up drug, would drug companies waste the same amount of money that they currently do on R&D? I'm of the opinion that we would see a major slow down in drug innovation without patents. R&D is very wasteful and expensive. Patents prevent competition for a short period of time to help the business recoup losses from failed experiments and to deliver profits which serve as an inc…

Why can't patents have a duration? If you're the first to come up with an idea, you get 5 years head start before competitors can use your patent for their own ends. If you never have the resources to materialize your idea or can't find a seat in the market, that's unfortunate but oh well. We can't keep allowing battery technology to be held back because Exxon bought up all the patents years ago. I don't believe pate…

I'm not opposed to a different system for different industries.

I'm just saying that, for example, I don't think we would've discovered a hep-c drug without the incentive of exclusive rights to sell the drug. I think the individual researchers are probably motivated by their desire to help people, but corporations don't run on altruism.

Re: The US Supreme Court is hearing a case about patent law’s “exhaustion doctrine”

#54

Post by Someone1234 »

psyc wrote: post #49
Someone1234 wrote: post #43

I don't think patents are inherently evil; and I also believe that "obvious" patents will get less common with time (relatively speaking we're still in the early days of patent law for many areas). That being said, I think the big issue we're seeing these days is that some patent categories simply last too long. Technology moves a mile a minute, a patent system with a duration of 20 years is absurd, something that wa…

I'm personally against patents, but even if I were to assume they do provide the common good used to justify them, the #1 problem with patents is that the people who grant them appear to be either completely unqualified, or under too great a workload. Or both.

Even if they did do a better job of reviewing patents in certain countries, people would just shop around until they found the most lenient international patent office and file there.

The US Patent office in particular decided many years ago that they simply weren't qualified to review all patents and just left it to the courts to deal with the fallout.

Realistically a patent examiner cannot be qualified in all areas; so they'd need to gather industry experts which would make patent filing pretty expensive (plus a lot of experts disagree, so where do you set the standard?).

Re: The US Supreme Court is hearing a case about patent law’s “exhaustion doctrine”

#55

Post by zebrafish »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #46
zebrafish wrote: post #17

Without the guarantee of a patented marked up drug, would drug companies waste the same amount of money that they currently do on R&D? I'm of the opinion that we would see a major slow down in drug innovation without patents. R&D is very wasteful and expensive. Patents prevent competition for a short period of time to help the business recoup losses from failed experiments and to deliver profits which serve as an inc…

We just need shorter patents. For example drug companies spend far more on marketing than they do on R&D and a substantial amount of the research that generates new drugs comes from government funded research (>50%). Also, it's been demonstrated that taxpayer funded research drives private R&D up. So if I was dictator, I'd make it illegal to advertise drugs on tv/radio/web, double the current government budget for dr…

I'm a proponent of these ideas. Patent duration as a function of private capital spent? It would have to be immune to "profit-shifting" but maybe that could be a good alternative.

Re: The US Supreme Court is hearing a case about patent law’s “exhaustion doctrine”

#56

Post by cust0m »

clarkmoody wrote: post #51
zebrafish wrote: post #17

Without the guarantee of a patented marked up drug, would drug companies waste the same amount of money that they currently do on R&D? I'm of the opinion that we would see a major slow down in drug innovation without patents. R&D is very wasteful and expensive. Patents prevent competition for a short period of time to help the business recoup losses from failed experiments and to deliver profits which serve as an inc…

R&D is ultra-expensive in-part because of government regulation. So the government is playing both sides of the ball: + Pile up mountains of red tape through the FDA + Provide patent protections for those with enough money to wade through the red tape + Give R&D grants to companies with taxpayer money to take up the slack in their budget So since R&D is so expensive, only large companies can afford it, which is just…

Yeah, in the actual system the government plays with the large companies to make big money on top of every single aspect in life of people.

Re: The US Supreme Court is hearing a case about patent law’s “exhaustion doctrine”

#57

Post by ethbro »

erikw wrote: post #24
zebrafish wrote: post #17

Without the guarantee of a patented marked up drug, would drug companies waste the same amount of money that they currently do on R&D? I'm of the opinion that we would see a major slow down in drug innovation without patents. R&D is very wasteful and expensive. Patents prevent competition for a short period of time to help the business recoup losses from failed experiments and to deliver profits which serve as an inc…

I see this sentiment a lot- "yes patents are bad for individuals and from a macroeconomic perspective, but we need them so that Big Pharma can ultimately improve our quality of life." I wonder though, has anyone studied to see if that holds up? I suspect that our quality of life improvements come from infrastructure like access to safe drinking water, and general accessibility to medicines not protected by intellectu…

> general accessibility to medicines not protected by intellectual property monopolies

Could you provide some examples of these?

Re: The US Supreme Court is hearing a case about patent law’s “exhaustion doctrine”

#58

Post by lkrubner »

zebrafish wrote: post #17

Without the guarantee of a patented marked up drug, would drug companies waste the same amount of money that they currently do on R&D? I'm of the opinion that we would see a major slow down in drug innovation without patents. R&D is very wasteful and expensive. Patents prevent competition for a short period of time to help the business recoup losses from failed experiments and to deliver profits which serve as an inc…

> R&D is very wasteful and expensive.

Therefore the government should pay for all of it. In the USA, since 1970, funding for science has declined. If we could merely get funding back to the trend line of 1930 to 1970, then the government would certainly be able to cover this kind of research. More so, it is completely incoherent for anyone to argue "We should leave this to the private sector because the private sector is more efficient than the government, but this process is wasteful and so we must grant a monopoly to whoever is willing to do this." Rather, as soon as someone says "We must grant a monopoly" they are also saying "the private sector market place has failed" and therefore they are also implicitly saying "The government should do this."

Re: The US Supreme Court is hearing a case about patent law’s “exhaustion doctrine”

#59

Post by mtgx »

psyc wrote: post #49
Someone1234 wrote: post #43

I don't think patents are inherently evil; and I also believe that "obvious" patents will get less common with time (relatively speaking we're still in the early days of patent law for many areas). That being said, I think the big issue we're seeing these days is that some patent categories simply last too long. Technology moves a mile a minute, a patent system with a duration of 20 years is absurd, something that wa…

I'm personally against patents, but even if I were to assume they do provide the common good used to justify them, the #1 problem with patents is that the people who grant them appear to be either completely unqualified, or under too great a workload. Or both.

I think I'd prefer it if filing for a patent would cost like $500, or even less, but then the USPTO would reject most applications by default, instead of accepting most applications by default, as they do now.

I'd prefer a rejection bias over an acceptance one. And I think a patent costing however many thousands of dollars it does now puts some pressure on USPTO employees to accept most patents.

Re: The US Supreme Court is hearing a case about patent law’s “exhaustion doctrine”

#60

Post by ue_ »

zebrafish wrote: post #53
dickbasedregex wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't patents have a duration? If you're the first to come up with an idea, you get 5 years head start before competitors can use your patent for their own ends. If you never have the resources to materialize your idea or can't find a seat in the market, that's unfortunate but oh well. We can't keep allowing battery technology to be held back because Exxon bought up all the patents years ago. I don't believe pate…

I'm not opposed to a different system for different industries. I'm just saying that, for example, I don't think we would've discovered a hep-c drug without the incentive of exclusive rights to sell the drug. I think the individual researchers are probably motivated by their desire to help people, but corporations don't run on altruism.

It would be nice if the tools and means of production were owned by the individual researchers, then.
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