5 ms·

You still need patents. Healthcare is an obvious example, if we eliminated patents we'd have 0 new drugs pass FDA approval over the next decade. But software

You still need patents. Healthcare is an obvious example, if we eliminated patents we'd have 0 new drugs pass FDA approval over the next decade. But software is very different from medical patents.

pacifist 6y ago
Really? How about socializing all of medicine.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  Including drug discovery? I'm very skeptical of that working out better than the current system (for drug discovery).
  - monocasa 6y ago
    Our current system uses incredible amounts of public funding for drug discovery. https://www.pnas.org/content/115/10/2329 https://www.pnas.org/content/115/10/2329
    - TomVDB 6y ago
      The article references mentions $100B over a period of 7 years, or $14B per year. That’s a decent chunk of money, but it’s important to put it in perspective. Pfizer alone spends around $10B per year on R&D. J&J: $12B. Merck: $13B.
      - monocasa 6y ago
        And how much of the expenditure goes anywhere useful? And remember that they're incentivized to report 15% of their revenue being spent on R&D for tax reasons. That $100B is just for drugs that later got FDA approval, not the NIH grant budget.
        TomVDB 6y ago
        If you’re going to make that argument, you also have to consider the opposite possibility: I’ve worked on (non-medical) projects with public funding in the past. One can only hope that my experience wasn’t representative for the amount waste of public money in the medical world.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - conanbatt 6y ago
        The coronavirus probably shows patents to be a thorny mechanism for innovation. Pfizer might have a vax patent but then can't freely make money of it. If there were no patents, but they were the best manufacturers, might have been easier to have a freer market on it. Patents necessarily put more capital investments into patentable work than unpatentable work, but that doesnt mean it is more efficient. I understand the principle of patents, but eventually you end up in heavy interventionism, state funding, litigation, etc. Best to do away of all of that imo.
- JamesBarney 6y ago
  The patent's purpose is to incentivize innovation. Some industries need this (medical) others don't (software). So if you got rid of patents innovation in some industries will be fine (software) and others will be wrecked (medical). Patents are not the only way to incentivize innovation, and I think it'd be great to experiment with some other ways. Socializing medicine is completely orthogonal to this issue. Unless you mean socializing drug discovery which would be a completely unproven way to develop drugs at scale.
  - monocasa 6y ago
    It's funny, I've heard from biomed engineers that it's clear to them that patents don't work in the medical field, unlike how they're effective in the software field. It feels like every field knows that they're a cash grab without a lot of benefits, but assumes there's some industry that they don't work in where they're needed.
    - hi_im_miles 6y ago
      Though this is only one person's personal experience, to me this was an illuminating conversation on the state of medical device repair as a consequence of strong IP protections: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsJG2ODOcXA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsJG2ODOcXA
    - breck 6y ago
      Exactly this. I worked for a few years in big tech, and it was crystal clear that patents and copyrights were awful in tech. But I believed the lie that maybe in medicine, they were needed. I spent a few years in medical research and realized that ohhhh shit, even worse in this industry. The whole thing is a big lie. End copyrights. End patents. The ideal length is zero. There is no case to be made to support them. We need to abolish them outright.
      - anticensor 6y ago
        Not zero, but 3½ years for patents and 21 years (7+3½ per extension) for copyright is enough.
ekianjo 6y ago
Funny. New drugs existed before patents were a thing.
- dev_tty01 6y ago
  Really? Name some. The patent system started in 1790. The FDA didn't exist, thus no expensive trials and safety validation. Medicine was just a bunch of trial and error with no controls.
  - breck 6y ago
    Penicillin and ether were not covered by patents. Pretty sure those were two of the greatest of all time. On the patent side you have such modern marvels as OxyContin, which has arguably caused more loss of life than COVID-19. Patented drugs are generally awful. The idea that it costs $1B to make a game changing drug is a lie. It costs $1T. The US taxpayer pays 99.9%, and the big pharma company spends a billion to generate some shitty subpar derivative that they can then get monopoly protection on and create an artificial racket supported by false marketing.
    - EdwardDiego 6y ago
      Iirc the inventor of the Polio vaccine could've patented it, but chose not to.
    - nl 6y ago
      All Opioid deaths between 1999 and 2017 were about 400k in the US. Well less than the Covid death toll in the US alone. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid_epidemic_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid_epidemic_in_the_Unite...
      - breck 6y ago
        Average expected years left to live for a Covid death is about 11, prior to having any information on pre-existing conditions. Divide that by 2-3x once you are given pre-existing conditions. The average Opiod death is 3x that by years alone, and more when going by expected healthspan. Hence "loss of life" and not "deaths".
cycomanic 6y ago
Actually, there is pretty strong evidence that patents are counterproductive for pharmaceuticals. Before the harmonization of IP laws, pharmaceuticals had different eligibility for patenting in the US, Europe and Switzerland. The US had the strongest, Europe somewhat weaker and in Switzerland it was inelligible. The Swiss companies invested the most money into R&D and were generally the most successful. The US ones were the leas successful and did the least R&D and instead invested much more into lawyers and marketing.
- andi999 6y ago
  Did the Swiss companies choose not to patent medication in other countries? It could just be that the market in Switzerland was small enough so that there was a gentleman's agreement not to copy the pharmaceutical.
- JamesBarney 6y ago
  The patent laws where you do the research doesn't matter as much as the patent laws where you're recouping the cost of your investment. And I assume those companies made 100x more money in the u.s. than Switzerland.
conanbatt 6y ago
> You still need patents. Healthcare is an obvious example, if we eliminated patents we'd have 0 new drugs pass FDA approval over the next decade. That's only if you look at how the system is today and evaluate as it is today. Software mostly doesn't have patents: theres no patent to an uber, to a paypal, to an amazon. You would have a different business model to fund medical innovation, for example, advance payments from prospective patients.

You still need patents. Healthcare is an obvious example, if we eliminated patents we'd have 0 new drugs pass FDA approval over the next decade. But software is very different from medical patents.

pacifist 6y ago

Really? How about socializing all of medicine.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
Including drug discovery? I'm very skeptical of that working out better than the current system (for drug discovery).
- monocasa 6y ago
  Our current system uses incredible amounts of public funding for drug discovery. https://www.pnas.org/content/115/10/2329 https://www.pnas.org/content/115/10/2329
  - TomVDB 6y ago
    The article references mentions $100B over a period of 7 years, or $14B per year. That’s a decent chunk of money, but it’s important to put it in perspective. Pfizer alone spends around $10B per year on R&D. J&J: $12B. Merck: $13B.
    - monocasa 6y ago
      And how much of the expenditure goes anywhere useful? And remember that they're incentivized to report 15% of their revenue being spent on R&D for tax reasons. That $100B is just for drugs that later got FDA approval, not the NIH grant budget.
      - TomVDB 6y ago
        If you’re going to make that argument, you also have to consider the opposite possibility: I’ve worked on (non-medical) projects with public funding in the past. One can only hope that my experience wasn’t representative for the amount waste of public money in the medical world.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - conanbatt 6y ago
      The coronavirus probably shows patents to be a thorny mechanism for innovation. Pfizer might have a vax patent but then can't freely make money of it. If there were no patents, but they were the best manufacturers, might have been easier to have a freer market on it. Patents necessarily put more capital investments into patentable work than unpatentable work, but that doesnt mean it is more efficient. I understand the principle of patents, but eventually you end up in heavy interventionism, state funding, litigation, etc. Best to do away of all of that imo.
JamesBarney 6y ago
The patent's purpose is to incentivize innovation. Some industries need this (medical) others don't (software). So if you got rid of patents innovation in some industries will be fine (software) and others will be wrecked (medical). Patents are not the only way to incentivize innovation, and I think it'd be great to experiment with some other ways. Socializing medicine is completely orthogonal to this issue. Unless you mean socializing drug discovery which would be a completely unproven way to develop drugs at scale.
- monocasa 6y ago
  It's funny, I've heard from biomed engineers that it's clear to them that patents don't work in the medical field, unlike how they're effective in the software field. It feels like every field knows that they're a cash grab without a lot of benefits, but assumes there's some industry that they don't work in where they're needed.
  - hi_im_miles 6y ago
    Though this is only one person's personal experience, to me this was an illuminating conversation on the state of medical device repair as a consequence of strong IP protections: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsJG2ODOcXA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsJG2ODOcXA
  - breck 6y ago
    Exactly this. I worked for a few years in big tech, and it was crystal clear that patents and copyrights were awful in tech. But I believed the lie that maybe in medicine, they were needed. I spent a few years in medical research and realized that ohhhh shit, even worse in this industry. The whole thing is a big lie. End copyrights. End patents. The ideal length is zero. There is no case to be made to support them. We need to abolish them outright.
    - anticensor 6y ago
      Not zero, but 3½ years for patents and 21 years (7+3½ per extension) for copyright is enough.

ekianjo 6y ago

Funny. New drugs existed before patents were a thing.

dev_tty01 6y ago
Really? Name some. The patent system started in 1790. The FDA didn't exist, thus no expensive trials and safety validation. Medicine was just a bunch of trial and error with no controls.
- breck 6y ago
  Penicillin and ether were not covered by patents. Pretty sure those were two of the greatest of all time. On the patent side you have such modern marvels as OxyContin, which has arguably caused more loss of life than COVID-19. Patented drugs are generally awful. The idea that it costs $1B to make a game changing drug is a lie. It costs $1T. The US taxpayer pays 99.9%, and the big pharma company spends a billion to generate some shitty subpar derivative that they can then get monopoly protection on and create an artificial racket supported by false marketing.
  - EdwardDiego 6y ago
    Iirc the inventor of the Polio vaccine could've patented it, but chose not to.
  - nl 6y ago
    All Opioid deaths between 1999 and 2017 were about 400k in the US. Well less than the Covid death toll in the US alone. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid_epidemic_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid_epidemic_in_the_Unite...
    - breck 6y ago
      Average expected years left to live for a Covid death is about 11, prior to having any information on pre-existing conditions. Divide that by 2-3x once you are given pre-existing conditions. The average Opiod death is 3x that by years alone, and more when going by expected healthspan. Hence "loss of life" and not "deaths".

cycomanic 6y ago

Actually, there is pretty strong evidence that patents are counterproductive for pharmaceuticals. Before the harmonization of IP laws, pharmaceuticals had different eligibility for patenting in the US, Europe and Switzerland. The US had the strongest, Europe somewhat weaker and in Switzerland it was inelligible. The Swiss companies invested the most money into R&D and were generally the most successful. The US ones were the leas successful and did the least R&D and instead invested much more into lawyers and marketing.

andi999 6y ago
Did the Swiss companies choose not to patent medication in other countries? It could just be that the market in Switzerland was small enough so that there was a gentleman's agreement not to copy the pharmaceutical.
JamesBarney 6y ago
The patent laws where you do the research doesn't matter as much as the patent laws where you're recouping the cost of your investment. And I assume those companies made 100x more money in the u.s. than Switzerland.

conanbatt 6y ago

> You still need patents. Healthcare is an obvious example, if we eliminated patents we'd have 0 new drugs pass FDA approval over the next decade. That's only if you look at how the system is today and evaluate as it is today. Software mostly doesn't have patents: theres no patent to an uber, to a paypal, to an amazon. You would have a different business model to fund medical innovation, for example, advance payments from prospective patients.