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> 2) Abolish patents, except for pharmaceutical industry. So what are the boundaries we'd place? Only companies whose primary income source is parmaceuticals a

> 2) Abolish patents, except for pharmaceutical industry. So what are the boundaries we'd place? Only companies whose primary income source is parmaceuticals are allowed to own patents? Are all the non-pharma companies still required to avoid patent infringement? Or is it that patents can only exist if they're relevant to pharmaceuticals? If so, where do you draw the border? If a pharmaceutical company comes up with a new process for synthesizing some compound Z which they use for their drug, is that patentable? What if it turns out that compound Z is also useful for weather-treating surfaces, and gains widespread use in construction? Now, what if we switch to an alternate timeline where compound Z was invented by a construction company first, and then pharma started to use it? What's the patent situation look like? #2 seems rather arbitrary to me, even moreso than existing patent law. I'm not convinced it's any better than the status quo, though also it's not clear to me exactly what you mean with it.

balfirevic 7y ago
The point is that the patent system is so deeply messed up an unjust that almost any move towards lessening the applicability of patents is a positive one. In these conversations, someone inevitably comes up with the "but what about the drug research" response. To avoid any worries that the drug research will cease if drugs are no longer patentable, the practical solution is to leave patents in place for drugs. Drugs are regulated in million of ways already. Patent system already has special provisions applicable only to drugs. Just craft the new intellectual property category that will cover 95% of ways patents are now used for pharmaceutical research and call it a day. It doesn't have to be justified from first principles or fully cover all the edge cases because: 1) patent system is already justified on purely consequentialist grounds (at least in the US) 2) existing patent system already fails basic sanity checks, let alone perfectly handling all the edge cases.

balfirevic 7y ago

The point is that the patent system is so deeply messed up an unjust that almost any move towards lessening the applicability of patents is a positive one. In these conversations, someone inevitably comes up with the "but what about the drug research" response. To avoid any worries that the drug research will cease if drugs are no longer patentable, the practical solution is to leave patents in place for drugs. Drugs are regulated in million of ways already. Patent system already has special provisions applicable only to drugs. Just craft the new intellectual property category that will cover 95% of ways patents are now used for pharmaceutical research and call it a day. It doesn't have to be justified from first principles or fully cover all the edge cases because: 1) patent system is already justified on purely consequentialist grounds (at least in the US) 2) existing patent system already fails basic sanity checks, let alone perfectly handling all the edge cases.