We've been having this discussion on HN for years now, and I haven't seen many workable alternatives to the current system as it applies to pharma. A lot of th

We've been having this discussion on HN for years now, and I haven't seen many workable alternatives to the current system as it applies to pharma. A lot of this boils down to risk and risk mitigation. Because the monetary outlays and failure risks are so considerable to shepherd a technology through the entire life cycle from conception to commercial availability, big pharma has to be extraordinarily selective about where they place their bets. They generally do not invest in early stage developments. In fact, these days, we have to find partners or spin out startups to help further the research to even get to the point that pharma wants to talk about licensing. The patent protections allow the time to get to that point and ensure our partners that they will have some protection to assure revenues (assuming the technology even makes it to market) sufficient to offset the costs associated with the various phases of clinical trials. It's by no means a perfect system, and there are some slightly different models out there. Singapore, for example, requires the research dollars to be reimbursed upon commercialization. That is a fairly small ecosystem to analyze, however, when compared to the scale of US investment via agencies like the NIH and NSF. Edit to add disclaimer: We have patents licensed to the company referenced in this article (Editas).