Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about Amazon?
OK, Amazon counts. Perhaps RIM isn't dead quite yet either. But the point remains.
Microsoft reveals the shroud of x.
The Case for Abolishing Patents (Yes, All of Them)
71–80 of 124 posts
Re: The Case for Abolishing Patents (Yes, All of Them)
#72Frequently 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…
There is definitely an element of US self-interest. The US invests a disproportionate amount of capital into R&D relative to its GDP compared to other countries and also reaps a disproportionate result from that R&D investment (i.e. US R&D investments tend to have a higher return per dollar invested compared to most countries). I have a strong self-interest in making sure effective R&D happens: computers, biomedical,…
Two things. R&D is not a generic, fungible thing. R&D that occurs in a patent environment will have a different focus than R&D that occurs without. I'd expect funding spent on lawyers writing defencive patent proposals would be figured on the balance sheet as R&D, even though it isn't. Or R&D spent finding new ways to extend existing patent rights of a drug. Or finding ways to innovate without breaching competitors' patents.
Secondly, there's no evidence to demonstrate that the amount of R&D that happens with patents is more than there would be without patents. I think you're focussed on the upside - companies that do some more work because of protection. But that needs to be balanced against the amount of research and development that isn't done because of the increased barriers to entry.
Re: The Case for Abolishing Patents (Yes, All of Them)
#73> 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 a big fan of Boldrin/Levine but suspect they're wrong about this. The reason medical investigation is so expensive is because there's so much red tape around it in the form of approvals, and the convoluted systems health coverage in the developed world. It's a classic insiders' club. People got institutionalised into the culture, and then can swap between government and industry. There's no strong incentive for anyone in the game to keep costs down. Much more important for the insiders that the barriers remain high.
Re: The Case for Abolishing Patents (Yes, All of Them)
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 getti…
Yes, but they don't have bottomless wallets.
Also, demand for drugs is often inelastic, so people are more likely to make sacrifices here to pay for drugs. Which is fine in itself, but not when the high costs are the product of a cartel arrangement between government and industry.
Re: The Case for Abolishing Patents (Yes, All of Them)
#75Frequently 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…
I disagree that there should be protections to stop people from "ripping off your stuff" and selling it without paying you for it. Instead, there should be protections to stop people from copying your idea without you getting credit for it. But there don't need to be legal protections. All you need to do is make your idea public to prevent anyone else from claiming they were first.
I'm serious about getting rid of all patents and all copyrights.
Re: The Case for Abolishing Patents (Yes, All of Them)
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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 getti…
Yes, but they don't have bottomless wallets. In some respects they do: often government or insurers are left with costs. The insurers make their margin upstream of this, so there's low price pressure on the drug manufacturers. Also, demand for drugs is often inelastic, so people are more likely to make sacrifices here to pay for drugs. Which is fine in itself, but not when the high costs are the product of a cartel a…
>In some respects they do: often government or insurers are left with costs. The insurers make their margin upstream of this, so there's low price pressure on the drug manufacturers.
But governments and insurers don't save money by saving your life. They save money by letting you die before you get old. That was the ironic thing about the tobacco settlements in the US - the states sued the federal government claiming damages for the extra care they had to provide to people who smoked, when those people would have cost the state more money if they'd lived a normal lifespan.
In some cases a new drug will save money by keeping some damaging disease from becoming a problem and pushing expensive treatments far into the future. That's not the normal case, though. I'm all for helping people live out their threescore and ten in good health, but on average it doesn't save anybody money.
>Also, demand for drugs is often inelastic, so people are more likely to make sacrifices here to pay for drugs. Which is fine in itself, but not when the high costs are the product of a cartel arrangement between government and industry.
Here again there has to be some way for the people doing development to recover their costs. The patent system allows the drug company to charge more to every patient who takes a drug for twenty years. Without it that would all have to be covered by tax money. I like the patent system better, since it's biased toward charging people with lifestyle-related problems more money than people who take care of themselves.
Also, with the patent system companies will spend money on development for treatments that are within the realm of scientific possibility and not because advocates for that particular disease have more political clout. How many billions were wasted in the "war on cancer"? Government just doesn't do this sort of thing very well.
Re: The Case for Abolishing Patents (Yes, All of Them)
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
That doesn't follow. If patents were abolished companies that spent nothing on development would be able to produce the exact drug that the FDA had approved.
Re: The Case for Abolishing Patents (Yes, All of Them)
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
The whole point is that its very difficult to quantify. The purpose of government, law, and indeed perhaps civilization itself is to reduce the amount of random, unquantifiable risks in daily life. That's whats so bad about patent trolling. Its just so uncivilized .
zm didn't say it was difficult to quantify. He said there was a "decent chance" of being sued. The implication is that he has quantified it and that quantity amounts to a "decent chance."
Oh? Well, if "decent" is a quantity then perhaps you can give us the number he's implying.
Re: The Case for Abolishing Patents (Yes, All of Them)
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tens of millions of dollars won't get a drug to market. Will it fund research that could find useful leads that could produce a drug? Of course. So how do you incentive private organizations to fork over the $100 million(1) or so it takes to get a drug to market? You provide a mechanism to regain your capital plus something more. It's a system that works pretty well. (1) That's if everything works the first time. Sin…
Funding the expensive regulatory process (which includes clinical trials and all the rest) is very easy to legislate. For example, grant a company some limited exclusive rights for commerce/sale of a drug they have funded through clinical trials. A commercial restriction on the sale of a drug would be far less onerous and legally problematic than the current patent system.
>For example, grant a company some limited exclusive rights for commerce/sale of a drug they have funded through clinical trials.
Eh, isn't that the textbook definition of a patent?
Re: The Case for Abolishing Patents (Yes, All of Them)
#80The fashion industry does quite well thank you WITHOUT patents. Check it out. No patents in fashion. The most you can do is copyright a logo and slap that on your product. The rest is open season, and we all are the richer for it.
Patents only make lawyers rich at the expense of the rest of us (the 99%).