Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

eff.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 145 posts

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

#81

Post by CuriouslyC »

wtetzner wrote: post #20
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…

> 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 incentive for more innovation. Is 20 years a short period of time? It seems like we'd get most of the benefits with fewer drawbacks by just shortening the time patents are granted for.

The problem is that there can be a significant amount of time between wanting to protect an idea and when you can effectively monetize that idea. It might take an inventor 10 years to work out the kinks in an invention and build a market for it to the point that they can really reap the rewards. I think anywhere between 10 and 20 years is a reasonable range.

On the other hand, copyright terms are just bat-shit insane and needs to be scaled back tremendously.

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

#82

Post by zebrafish »

danielweber wrote: post #75
zebrafish wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You are getting close to advocating for "cost plus" which sounds really good to outsiders who are concerned about "too much profit" but have stunted every industry into which they have been deployed, and end up driving prices as suppliers look for ways to increase how much they spend. (The more they spend, the more profit they can make.) Look at the aerospace industry.

I'm not concerned about too much profit. I'm just concerned about stifling competition for too long. Patents feel like crony capitalism in some industries.

After posting I did consider the lone software engineer who comes up with a great idea, creates an app, and his app is then copied by Google who has much better marketing and distribution resources.

If patent duration was a function of investment in R&D, this software developer would be SOL because he invested little into his "eureka" idea.

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

#83

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

danielweber wrote: post #74
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> We just need shorter patents. This is nuts. By the time a major drug is ready for market, out of a 20 year patent there are usually only 5 years left. How much shorter do you think it should be? When they are operating under that kind of deadline, they don't have time for word-of-mouth marketing. For software, sure, I'm really willing to hear arguments that 20 years is too long. But drug patents lifetimes are alrea…

>If something is too expensive, wait a few years.

Isn't that the point? In medicine, you often can't just wait it out. Healthcare is not a normal market.

>By the time a major drug is ready for market, out of a 20 year patent there are usually only 5 years left.

>And for most new drugs, patents expire approximately 12 years after market introduction.

https://hbr.org/2014/11/the-real-cost-of-high-priced-drugs

>When they are operating under that kind of deadline, they don't have time for word-of-mouth marketing.

Word-of-mouth marketing isn't really "slow" if the drug is very effective.

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

#84

Post by dforrestwilson1 »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #6

It's interesting to note Lexmark tried to (ab)use other kinds of so-called "intelectual property" laws earlier: the copyright law and DMCA. When they failed, they decided to use patents instead. And all this for what purpose? To prevent people from using cartridges manufactured by other companies, i.e. blocking competition and acting against free market and user rights. If this isn't abuse, I don't know what it is. I…

Didn't Gillette did the same thing with Dollar Shave Club?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/p-gs-gillette-sues-dollar-shave...

I would guess that this influenced their decision to sell to P&G, thus protecting the razor duopoly.

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

#85

Post by turc1656 »

This is just an extension of a tied sale. Tying agreements are already illegal under anti-trust law. The only difference here is that Lexmark (and other companies) are skipping the contract/agreement part of it and going directly to forcing the hand of the consumer by adding new changes and inserting technology that has no other purpose than to specifically limit the consumer to purchase a related product (in this case, ink), where no such restriction previously existed and therefore is not naturally occurring. This is even worse than a regular tied sale arrangement because the consumer never agrees to it.

The only wrinkle I can see is that the tied sale laws seem to relate to unrelated products or services. The ink that goes with the printer is obviously related, but I think that's irrelevant here because of the history of inkjet printers. We all know that there never used to be any inherent, natural limitation to obtaining ink from another manufacturer as long as it was designed specifically for your make and model. The new changes were deliberately put in by Lexmark and other printer manufacturers for the sole purpose of restraining trade/commerce. That is blatantly in violation of anti-trust law.

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

#86

Post by danielweber »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #83
danielweber wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We just need shorter patents. This is nuts. By the time a major drug is ready for market, out of a 20 year patent there are usually only 5 years left. How much shorter do you think it should be? When they are operating under that kind of deadline, they don't have time for word-of-mouth marketing. For software, sure, I'm really willing to hear arguments that 20 years is too long. But drug patents lifetimes are alrea…

>If something is too expensive, wait a few years. Isn't that the point? In medicine, you often can't just wait it out. Healthcare is not a normal market. >By the time a major drug is ready for market, out of a 20 year patent there are usually only 5 years left. >And for most new drugs, patents expire approximately 12 years after market introduction. https://hbr.org/2014/11/the-real-cost-of-high-priced-drugs >When the…

> In medicine, you often can't just wait it out. Healthcare is not a normal market

Then you pay.

I have family members who are only functional because of prescription drugs. When I see someone on HN talk about how "oh, it will probably be okay if we mess with this market, I read this really cool article online that said so," I see them no different than someone who decided on their own to start tinkering with grandpa's iron lung, because "oh, it will probably be okay." You don't know what you are messing with. Stop it.

>And for most new drugs, patents expire approximately 12 years after market introduction.

I don't know what the HBR's source is because they don't tell me. I am telling you to find any drug you see newly on the market, particularly one you see on tv since you worry about marketing budgets, and look up when its patent expires.

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

#87

Post by lkrubner »

zebrafish wrote: post #72
lkrubner wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 secto…

I'm definitely not in favor of granting more than a temporary monopoly to recoup losses and provide profit incentives. I just don't believe that the government should be in the business of drug research. If they fund all of it, they get to decide which drugs will be researched. Let's assume that these decisions are somehow shielded from the influence of politicians. What becomes your KPI for what to research? Profit?…

If you took 20 minutes, you could easily look up the answer to your questions. We already have a system, and it works well, it only needs more money. SSRIs (serotonin reuptake inhibitors), Viagra, and countless other blockbuster drugs grew out of government funded research.

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

#88

Post by aeorgnoieang »

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…

Yes, this has been studied. Pharmaceuticals are actually one of the few areas where patents and other IP protections do actually encourage innovation. For most areas tho the protections seem to be of (significantly) net negative utility.

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

#90

Post by gerbilly »

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…

>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?

Maybe new drug development shouldn't be done by for profit companies at all.

Have the government fund research institutes instead.

Post reply on HN