The Case for Abolishing Patents (Yes, All of Them) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Case for Abolishing Patents (Yes, All of Them)

#61

Post by jcroll » Sun, Sep 30, 2012, 6:31 AM UTC

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #54

So the argument here isn't that a patent system is inherently bad; you could have a patent system that provides a net win for society. But over time, entrenched interests will find ways to twist the system to their advantage, at the expense of society at large. Let's say this is true; how is this different from any government action in the marketplace? From education to finance to healthcare, we're confronted with pr…

How about an educated electorate that votes and votes good representatives into office who will diligently represent the interests of their informed electorate? Read through that sentence again, let it soak in, you will begin to see everything that is wrong with the American political system.

Re: The Case for Abolishing Patents (Yes, All of Them)

#62

Post by tsotha » Sun, Sep 30, 2012, 7:18 AM UTC

marshray wrote: post #38

lionhearted wrote: post #8

Frequently overlooked -- American companies are huge net-exporters of IP, IP licenses, and IP-protected stuff. Take the recent Apple/Samsung fiasco, for instance. That's a net cash transfer of over $1B from the South Korean economy to the American economy. Maybe $2B to $3B total when accounting for all the factors. Is that good? No, it's disgraceful, actually. But good luck convincing American legislators of some abs…

OK, so $1B goes from Samsung to Apple. But what is the cost to the US economy of the fact that we now have only ONE* company left who can design and market handheld portable electronics? * One might argue that Motorola isn't fully dead yet.

What about Amazon?

Re: The Case for Abolishing Patents (Yes, All of Them)

#63

Post by geon » Sun, Sep 30, 2012, 7:28 AM UTC

refurb wrote: post #46

alexqgb wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it's closer to $1 billion on average." As mentioned, that's a hugely suspicious "fact". As noted by the National Center for Biotechnology Information. "In the March 2003 edition of the Journal of Health Economics, a trio of economists from the United States wrote about a number. Soon after, that number began popping up all over the place — in newspapers and political speeches, on television and the Internet. But the…

I agree that the numbers thrown around are often a lot of hand waving. However, let me make a few points few points. 1. Check out the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development. They calculate the cost to create a new drug and their methodology is very transparent. http://csdd.tufts.edu/research/research_milestones 2. You can do a simple sniff test on these numbers. Simply call up a CRO that runs clinical trials…

I have heard that drug patents are trivially circumvented by adding some irrelevant part to the active molecule. Instead it is the FDA approval process that prevents ripoffs.

Doesn't that mean pharma is the one industry where patents could be abolished with literally no consequence?

Re: The Case for Abolishing Patents (Yes, All of Them)

#64

Post by tsotha » Sun, Sep 30, 2012, 7:44 AM UTC

alexqgb wrote: post #18

rauljara wrote: post #4

> The poster child for strong patent protection is usually the pharmaceutical industry, as drugs are easily copied and can cost upwards of a billion dollars to develop. Here, Boldrin and Levine admit that the government would likely need to step in. But rather than giving companies a legal monopoly over their formulas, the authors suggest we should modify the drug approval process to let makers start recouping their…

I'm always astonished by the idea that, were it not for patents and the profits they promise, "no motivation to develop drugs would exist". At one point I worked with a group that raised money to finance medical research for patients with lupus. These were folks who were seen as too few, and suffering from something too complex, to be profitable. For the most part they were relying on some pretty toxic treatments tha…

>I'm sorry, but that is absolutely, categorically, and demonstrably false. If people are sick and dying, they have bottomless motivation.

Yes, but they don't have bottomless wallets. I'm sure a great deal of research would still happen in the absence of large potential profits. The problem is very little of it would lead to drugs your doctor could prescribe. The drug targets are the easy part - the hard part is getting a compound through clinical trials, and ones you get approved has to pay for the other 90% that didn't make it because they were too toxic or didn't work as well as existing treatments.

As a real-world case consider antibiotics. There's a huge need for new antibiotics - if you get the right strain of MRSA your doctor is going to be about as useful as the local faith healer. Same goes for a nasty strain of the clap that's making the rounds in Japan. Totally resistant to existing antibiotics - once you get it, it's not going away.

But for various reasons there's no money in antibiotics (or vaccines, either, but let's just stick with antibiotics). You don't get repeat customers, and the bugs will start to develop resistance in a few years. With no profit motive drug companies aren't doing what they need to do to bring new antibiotics to market. So there's nothing in the pipeline.

The concern, of course, is that if you did away with patents entirely every type of drug would be like antibiotics. Drug companies wouldn't exist at all, or they'd exist as contractors to governments (oh, and wouldn't that be efficient).

Re: The Case for Abolishing Patents (Yes, All of Them)

#65

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Sep 30, 2012, 7:47 AM UTC

shadowmint wrote: post #44

lionhearted wrote: post #8

Frequently overlooked -- American companies are huge net-exporters of IP, IP licenses, and IP-protected stuff. Take the recent Apple/Samsung fiasco, for instance. That's a net cash transfer of over $1B from the South Korean economy to the American economy. Maybe $2B to $3B total when accounting for all the factors. Is that good? No, it's disgraceful, actually. But good luck convincing American legislators of some abs…

Remember theres a difference between getting rid of patents and getting rid of intellectual property. I don't think anyone is serious about suggesting we get rid of intellectual property; if you're create something, there should be protections to stop people ripping off your stuff and selling it without paying you for it. It's patents that are the problem. Patents let you capture an idea and prevent people from creat…

[deleted]

Re: The Case for Abolishing Patents (Yes, All of Them)

#66

Post by josephlord » Sun, Sep 30, 2012, 7:57 AM UTC

jacques_chester wrote: post #39

zanny wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Software costs next to nothing to produce. Why is it so easy to have startups in this sector? What is the overhead of a software/web company? It is almost all intellectual. Ask Microsoft. Pure profit. I'd argue software is extremelty expensive to produce, on the basis that distributing software is so insignificantly expensive that it could be called free. Relative to the costs of distribution, paying developers…

The key is that software development is an unavoidable sunk cost. Once it has been paid, it can be ignored in terms of considering per-unit pricing. The actual marginal cost of each unit of software sold is pretty close to zero. This is what makes it so fantastically profitable compared to almost anything else.

The same is true of most drugs. Marginal cost is near zero compared to development cost.

In neither case do you necessarily have fantastic profits although if you can sell at scale at a good price it becomes very likely but if you have a drug for a niche market or software in a crowded market it is quite possible to make a loss.

This is neither an argument for or against the patent abolition proposition which I am torn on. I can definitely imagine with alternative arrangements for Pharma we could be better off than currently but I believe that there must be something possible that is better than both what we have now and better than nothing.

Re: The Case for Abolishing Patents (Yes, All of Them)

#67

Post by utopkara » Sun, Sep 30, 2012, 7:59 AM UTC

Not all patents are by trolls or big corporates. Patents are crucial to medium size and small size firms. A healthy economy requires to create an environment for these firms to thrive. If you think big corporates are the ones to focus on, check out Germany: http://www.economist.com/node/18061718

Re: The Case for Abolishing Patents (Yes, All of Them)

#68

Post by marshray » Sun, Sep 30, 2012, 8:11 AM UTC

tsotha wrote: post #62

marshray wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, so $1B goes from Samsung to Apple. But what is the cost to the US economy of the fact that we now have only ONE* company left who can design and market handheld portable electronics? * One might argue that Motorola isn't fully dead yet.

What about Amazon?

OK, Amazon counts. Perhaps RIM isn't dead quite yet either. But the point remains.

Re: The Case for Abolishing Patents (Yes, All of Them)

#69

Post by barrkel » Sun, Sep 30, 2012, 8:30 AM UTC

refurb wrote: post #46

alexqgb wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it's closer to $1 billion on average." As mentioned, that's a hugely suspicious "fact". As noted by the National Center for Biotechnology Information. "In the March 2003 edition of the Journal of Health Economics, a trio of economists from the United States wrote about a number. Soon after, that number began popping up all over the place — in newspapers and political speeches, on television and the Internet. But the…

I agree that the numbers thrown around are often a lot of hand waving. However, let me make a few points few points. 1. Check out the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development. They calculate the cost to create a new drug and their methodology is very transparent. http://csdd.tufts.edu/research/research_milestones 2. You can do a simple sniff test on these numbers. Simply call up a CRO that runs clinical trials…

Do you think Big Pharma has an interest in keeping these costs high to prevent competition?

Re: The Case for Abolishing Patents (Yes, All of Them)

#70

Post by barrkel » Sun, Sep 30, 2012, 8:45 AM UTC

bluedanieru wrote: post #56

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #54

So the argument here isn't that a patent system is inherently bad; you could have a patent system that provides a net win for society. But over time, entrenched interests will find ways to twist the system to their advantage, at the expense of society at large. Let's say this is true; how is this different from any government action in the marketplace? From education to finance to healthcare, we're confronted with pr…

Stop electing assholes to public office.

The people I've known personally who've tried (and sometimes succeeded, one of them was a member of the European Parliament, my old Irish teacher Sean O'Neachtain) to get into public office have all been pompous assholes. You don't really get much of a choice.