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In a technology driven economy (which we are), a 25 year monopoly on a new technology is a monopoly of a market for a generation.
by adgjlsfhk1 5y ago
In a technology driven economy (which we are), a 25 year monopoly on a new technology is a monopoly of a market for a generation.
- wolverine876 5y agoThere are many ways to accomplish the same things. Tech companies have large patent portfolios, yet there is plenty of competition. Perhaps the biggest obstacles to competition are the network effect for social media, and brand power - people use Amazon and Google despite many equally good alternatives.
- adgjlsfhk1 5y agoThe problem is that even if there are alternative ways, it's not always profitable to find them. One clear example is drug prices. The price to manufacture a drug is tiny compared to the cost to develop a new one, so of someone has a patent on a drug that cures a disease, it's not worth anyone else's time to develop a different drug. Getting your drug approved will take years (for good reason), and at the end, you have a product that competes with another company, where instead you could just develop a different drug and get your own monopoly. As such, there are product monopolies on pretty much all drugs to treat rare diseases.