3 ms·
Ask HN: Is there any empirical evidence that patents do good in some industries?
I know most people here will agree that software patents do more harm than good, but is there actual data to show that patents are good for other industries?
- serichsen 15y agoIt seems that the development of drugs is such an incredibly expensive investment that you need to grant a limited monopoly to the developer so that he can recoup on it.
- ig1 15y agoAverage cost to bring a new drug to market is around $1.5 billion
- tobylane 15y agoDrug production is (to oversimplify, please correct) to blindly create millions of combinations, test the successful-looking versions on rats, cats and people, and produce billions of the drug. I wonder how the money is split between those tasks.
- ig1 15y agoThe biggest expense is typically human clinical trial where you're looking at a figure in the high hundreds of millions.