171–180 of 219 posts
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No, only a small part of this is publicly funded.
Nearly all basic science research is publicly funded, then in the US transferred to the private sector for commercial exploitation
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The book goes into quite a bit of depth if it is a topic that interests you. I would flag that we’re getting into “prove a negative” territory here: the goalpost is that we need to prove empirically that patents achieve the desired outcome. If the scenario you describe accounts for all game-theory/incentive/complex-adaptive-system universes, we should see this reflected in the data. When it comes to pharmaceuticals,…
Thanks for actually giving a great answer to this versus the other knee-jerk comments! I will definitely look into this more. I think it's important to note that the cost of bringing a drug to market has increased a lot (about threefold) since 1990, so if the case studies are that old they might not generalize.
You’ll have to forgive me if my answer isn’t super satisfying - it’s possible, but I’d want to see patents under these conditions empirically validated.
Some things you might find interesting - the author(s) make various arguments such as:
1) Ranking (by various metrics/criteria) the most impactful medicines and making the case that the ones developed independently from patents are both over represented and more impactful. (There was some stuff around what kind of medicines are incentivised with each regime)
2) I don’t exactly remember what they say about R&D costs increasing with time (aside from (1)-style skepticism), but they did talk how as time went on, logistics/distribution/marketing technology has grown immeasurably, so the window one has before the copycats come in can be exploited with a lot more gusto.
3) Reverse engineering of medicines + especially their industrialisation takes longer (and requires more capital) than people think, and there’s a bit of a conundrum where, because you don’t know which medicines will be commercially successful, you have to wait to see how they perform on the market… but the longer you wait, the more (2) happens (and the more you have to fight first mover advantage, established marketing etc)
The points are more rigorously covered in the book - (2)+(3) had papers that quantified the stated effects in question.
I will stress again though that while the “counter-narratives” are interesting and may help build some intuition, I would set the gold standard to some econometric/shock-analysis of patents in action.
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Unregulated market dynamics also gave us child labor, slave trade, 12h work days, company scrip, companies ruling over governments, etc. A powerful engine without constraints is out of control.
England imposed the institution of slavery on the American colonies by means of their regulation of economic affairs. It didn't occur spontaneously from market dynamics, but was specifically provided for by (their) laws.
It wasn't just some government flex.
You also haven't addressed any of the other negatives that unregulated market dynamics have manifested.
The plaintiff is Stephen Thaler who has made a career of this litigation all over the world. To my knowledge, he has notched only one win (i.e., granted patent) in South Africa, where patents are only cursorily examined [1]. The last word in the US is from the Federal Circuit a couple of years ago [2]. Same basic outcome: only a human being can be an inventor. That said, the new Director of the USPTO has indicated th…
The book “against intellectual monopoly” has shaped a lot of my thinking on this topic - economists have looked at the various occasions in which patents were introduced into an industry (or extended in scope), and there is no evidence they actually improve innovation/efficiency/outcomes (including the pharma industry!). I was quite surprised as my whole life, it was sold to me as an incentive-boosting measure which…
This book gets a lot of airtime in discussions of IP but the authors have a narrative they are trying to push and they don't let inconvenient things like facts or history get in the way. The book cherry-picks its sources, and even then contains several mischaracterizations and exaggerations of those works. There are many other economists who have shown significant beneficial aspects of patents with empirical data but…
Having said that, the bits I found juicy - i.e on the various shock analyses coming from patent introductions or increasing of scope, the studies on how effective first mover advantages was etc. all seemed pretty solid when I checked the sources - admittedly they were deeper into the book, so you may have already abandoned it by then.
> There are many other economists who have shown significant beneficial aspects of patents with empirical data but they conveniently don’t get mentioned at all.
Any chance you have some to share? When I LLM’d the topic a while ago the best I got was some weak investment effect in Singapore (unaccompanied by TFP/etc).
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The book goes into quite a bit of depth if it is a topic that interests you. I would flag that we’re getting into “prove a negative” territory here: the goalpost is that we need to prove empirically that patents achieve the desired outcome. If the scenario you describe accounts for all game-theory/incentive/complex-adaptive-system universes, we should see this reflected in the data. When it comes to pharmaceuticals,…
I think the "prove a negative" idea is a bit silly, my common sense says that the patent system should work better so if it doesn't, somebody's going to have to extensively prove it to me or show me a clear mechanism as to why it doesn't. I could read a book on it but Italy/Switzerland (combined ~5-10% of drug discovery) making changes 60 years ago doesn't get me too excited about updating my priors.
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Oh, please let it be the second option. Let AI be the thing that kills the "intellectual property" because humans will never manage to shake off that terribly wrong decision by themselves.
You can't prove something is/isn't created with AI. Also, if AI generated content cannot be copyrighted, they can't infringe copyright as well
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Who says you need to? You can't definitively prove that prior art does/doesn't exist, either. That's not an impediment to getting a patent. The patent will be examined and issued based on the evidence found. If invalidating evidence is found later, the patent can be invalidated. In a legal context what is necessary is evidence , not a math/logic formal proof . > Also, if AI generated content cannot be copyrighted, th…
Unless you are questioning the truthfulness of libraries, it is possible to definitively prove that prior art does exist
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In many research-intensive products go-to-market costs are bigger than the cost of actual invention. You buy a pharma startup for a few million for their patents, then spend tens of millions on certification, trials and manufacturing pipelines. Your competitors would spend most of that too on the same markets. Also, true inventions are rare. A lot of stuff that is being patented is just effort spent, that a lot of pe…
This sounds like it is working as intended. The patent comes early in the process to protect all the commercialization investment. Patents are intended to be filed early in the process, and they gain value as the invention proves its worth. Note also that you can patent a mining claim before pulling a single precious gem or mineral out of the ground.