4 ms·

In addition to reducing regulatory barriers that prevent generic producers, why is no one suggesting altering the pharmaceutical intellectual property system?

In addition to reducing regulatory barriers that prevent generic producers, why is no one suggesting altering the pharmaceutical intellectual property system? Twenty years to hold monopoly production rights is an obscene amount of time. Yes, reducing that twenty to say five will reduce capital investments in drug research, but it will also alter the structure of those investments. Investing in improvements at the margin might make sense when you can collect 20 years of royalties, but if you can only collect 5 then it'll more often make sense to fund cures and use that 5 year monopoly to cure as many people as you can before the drug goes generic.

harryh 7y ago
The vast majority of drugs wouldn't even make it out of the FDA approval process before the patent expired if you set the term to 5 years.
- michael_j_ward 7y ago
  The number was merely an example. The alteration I proposed would be equivalently applicable to "5 years post FDA approval."
  - harryh 7y ago
    The typical window with today's regulatory framework is 7-12 years. Your proposal certainly changes that some, but it's not nearly as dramatic as your original framing of "reduce it from 20 to 5 years."
tryptophan 7y ago
Lowering drug patent duration would explode prices upwards. Its much easier to recover 1B investment over 20 years than 5. And this conspiracy that pharma is intentionally not funding cures to make more money is ridiculous. That would imply they know how to cure things, but just don't want to...
- michael_j_ward 7y ago
  Explode prices for this first 5 years, maybe it would. But then, the improvement would have to be enough over the most recent generic that the consumer would actually pay the increase. As to not investing in cures, I'm not saying they don't at all, but they allocate resources towards the best return on capital. And I'd ask you to apply your own reasoning, that "Its much easier to recover 1B investment over 20 years than 5" to which gives an easier return on capital. Of course, implicit in that is that it's less risky to fund research in incremental improvements than on outright cures- but I'm open to being taught differently on that. EDIT: fixing jumbled words

harryh 7y ago

The vast majority of drugs wouldn't even make it out of the FDA approval process before the patent expired if you set the term to 5 years.

michael_j_ward 7y ago
The number was merely an example. The alteration I proposed would be equivalently applicable to "5 years post FDA approval."
- harryh 7y ago
  The typical window with today's regulatory framework is 7-12 years. Your proposal certainly changes that some, but it's not nearly as dramatic as your original framing of "reduce it from 20 to 5 years."

tryptophan 7y ago

Lowering drug patent duration would explode prices upwards. Its much easier to recover 1B investment over 20 years than 5. And this conspiracy that pharma is intentionally not funding cures to make more money is ridiculous. That would imply they know how to cure things, but just don't want to...

michael_j_ward 7y ago
Explode prices for this first 5 years, maybe it would. But then, the improvement would have to be enough over the most recent generic that the consumer would actually pay the increase. As to not investing in cures, I'm not saying they don't at all, but they allocate resources towards the best return on capital. And I'd ask you to apply your own reasoning, that "Its much easier to recover 1B investment over 20 years than 5" to which gives an easier return on capital. Of course, implicit in that is that it's less risky to fund research in incremental improvements than on outright cures- but I'm open to being taught differently on that. EDIT: fixing jumbled words