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You'd think an easy enough change to the laws around IP for medical equipment would be that if they can't supply critical parts, particularly under extreme circ
by danimal88 7y ago
You'd think an easy enough change to the laws around IP for medical equipment would be that if they can't supply critical parts, particularly under extreme circumstances, they most hold harmless any supplier that is able to supply said parts.
- Waterluvian 7y agoI think there should be and probably are laws that give the. Executive the ability to shut off these rules in a time of crisis. Not sure it should be or needs to be automatic.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y agoClaim the patents under eminent domain. Easy peasy.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Rapzid 7y agoThe legislative giveth, and it taketh away.
- staticautomatic 7y agoThis is exactly how it works in the U.S.. The government's right to take your IP is explicitly rooted in eminent domain law.
- Frost1x 7y agoOr that the situation was absolutely ridiculous to begin with and goes way beyond what was ever intended by patent laws. I find it hard to believe that $11k was a justifiable price or that the valve design was novel or sophisticated enough that someone reproduced the geometry from scratch so trivially (without even using sophisticated 3D scanning techniques I might add, as I understand it). A lot of businesses strategically buy and sell patents in processes to prevent others from implementing the full process and to force royalties on single pieces. Patents have really got out of hand and in my opinion, stifle innovation more than secure and foster it the way they're currently being abused. IP protections do need to exist but there's a lot in terms of protection that is just garbage.
- inferiorhuman 7y agoThat price almost certainly had liability baked into it.
- lostlogin 7y agoI wouldn’t be certain about that. Getting medical equipment vendors to agree to pay for breakages or resulting costs is hard, and their markups buy a lot of lawyering.
- manmal 7y agoSo the price has lawyering baked in. I agree with GP that this is almost the same as liability.
- unionpivo 7y agoWhy would each part need it's own liability/layering baked in? The prices would be insane, if that was the case.
- inferiorhuman 7y agoYou must be new to American healthcare.
- manmal 7y ago€10k for a part that can be 3D printed for €1 isn't insane?
- zzaacchh 7y agoI think the price has research, development, and the cost of clinical trials baked in. I believe these costs can be very expensive, as (at least in the US) there are lots of hoops to jump through in order to sell medical devices. And many experiments don't lead to successful products, so the costs need to make in the "failure rate" as well. I think a lot of the high prices charged for medical gear isn't so much to recoup the variable cost of production of that item, it's to recoup the initial/fixed cost of bringing the gizmo to market. If people can "photocopy" someone else's device by just covering the variable cost, it might cripple companies' incentives for developing for the medical market. And I believe it's true that if a patent holder doesn't go after every known infringement, it becomes much more difficult to go after any known infringement. Not saying that 3d printing these valves doesn't feel like the right thing to do in this case. Just saying that feels like a more nuanced situation, rather than being cut/dry.
- lostcolony 7y agoYou'd think that some sort of control against obvious price gouging might also be doable. Yet, here we are.
- lallysingh 7y agoPart of that has to be a lack of competition. Captive market large enough to feed this company, small enough to avoid competition.