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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 improv

by erikw 10y ago

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 intellectual property monopolies.

ethbro 10y ago
> general accessibility to medicines not protected by intellectual property monopolies Could you provide some examples of these?
aeorgnoieang 10y ago
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.