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We need Congress to act and engage in compulsatory licensing for all patents in all medical devices and drugs. This would fix the problem quickly. Otherwise w

We need Congress to act and engage in compulsatory licensing for all patents in all medical devices and drugs. This would fix the problem quickly. Otherwise we have cases like this, and patent law does nothing but increase costs for everyone by entrenching monopolies in these fields.

nitrogen 15y ago
Compulsory licensing for bogus patents would only encourage more of them to be filed for the "free" money. We need to stop this problem at the source.
- einhverfr 15y ago
  We can tighten up patent criteria as well. But the point is.... if any medical device could license any patent (doesn't matter what patent it is) for no more than 5% of manufacturer->distributor sales price, there would still be reason to fight bogus patents, but prices would drop because you'd only get 5% of manufacturing royalties for 20 years, not 20 years of monopoly rights.
  - nitrogen 15y ago
    Ok. Is that 5% allocated to all patents? 5% per patent? If the latter, 20 patents would be enough to own the entire revenues for a device. Manufacturers would have incentive to remove as much functionality as possible from each device (to minimize patent coverage), requiring doctors to purchase more separate equipment to get all the features they need. In the case of an abstract diagnostic method patent, patent owners would split diagnostics into as many patents as possible to get as many 5% chunks as they can.
    - einhverfr 15y ago
      Most drugs have to license 1-2 patents at most. If you get rid of software patents, this problem becomes quite manageable in the medical world.
luriel 15y ago
> Otherwise we have cases like this, and patent law does nothing but increase costs for everyone by entrenching monopolies in these fields. This is precisely what patents are designed to do: create monopolies. But as usual with politics, it is easier to create more laws to try to patch up some of the consequences of a bad policy than to fix the actual policy. (All the laws intended to deal with the fallout from the failed Drug Prohibition are another good example.) All this reminds me of how amusing it was when Microsoft was being persecuted for antitrust violations when their whole business model was based on copyright, which again is based on government granted monopolies. But of course when the lives and health of people are involved the farce turns to tragedy.
- xer0 15y ago
  "This is precisely what patents are designed to do: create monopolies." That's half of what monopolies are supposed to do, in my layman's observation of the field (i.e. everything I know I learned on HN). The other half is to encourage the dissemination of innovation to the benefit of society. What we have now is the first half, the monopoly. The second half is disappearing, replaced by patent holders preventing innovation from moving through society, and removing the use of what was once obvious from society.
Symmetry 15y ago
Better to just fix the damn patent system rather than trying to add another patch on top of it, I think. If you're going to have compulsory licensing how do you figure out what the fee should be? Having the government set the prices of a good or service is always tempting, but it's usually tended to work out badly historically[1]. Better to fix the injustice at the source. [1] For example, through medicare reimbursement rates the government strongly influences the pay rates of different types of doctors, and mandates that the gap in wages between a GP and a specialist be about twice what it is in other countries, which results in the US having lots of specialists but a huge lack of GPs compared to other countries, which means we do a very poor job of catching problems early, etc. EDIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource-based_relative_value_scale http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource-based_relative_value_s...
- einhverfr 15y ago
  My preferred solution would be to require all patentholders to offer reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing policies with their patent applications going forward, but with the caveat that medical devices and drugs would have license fee ceilings set by Congress (needed for cost control). This is not a patch on the patent system. This is a fundamental change in moving from a monopoly grant to a grant of rent for research. This is a huge change. I'd be willing to trade moderate extension of patent terms (say to 25 years) to accomplish this.

nitrogen 15y ago

Compulsory licensing for bogus patents would only encourage more of them to be filed for the "free" money. We need to stop this problem at the source.

einhverfr 15y ago
We can tighten up patent criteria as well. But the point is.... if any medical device could license any patent (doesn't matter what patent it is) for no more than 5% of manufacturer->distributor sales price, there would still be reason to fight bogus patents, but prices would drop because you'd only get 5% of manufacturing royalties for 20 years, not 20 years of monopoly rights.
- nitrogen 15y ago
  Ok. Is that 5% allocated to all patents? 5% per patent? If the latter, 20 patents would be enough to own the entire revenues for a device. Manufacturers would have incentive to remove as much functionality as possible from each device (to minimize patent coverage), requiring doctors to purchase more separate equipment to get all the features they need. In the case of an abstract diagnostic method patent, patent owners would split diagnostics into as many patents as possible to get as many 5% chunks as they can.
  - einhverfr 15y ago
    Most drugs have to license 1-2 patents at most. If you get rid of software patents, this problem becomes quite manageable in the medical world.

luriel 15y ago

> Otherwise we have cases like this, and patent law does nothing but increase costs for everyone by entrenching monopolies in these fields. This is precisely what patents are designed to do: create monopolies. But as usual with politics, it is easier to create more laws to try to patch up some of the consequences of a bad policy than to fix the actual policy. (All the laws intended to deal with the fallout from the failed Drug Prohibition are another good example.) All this reminds me of how amusing it was when Microsoft was being persecuted for antitrust violations when their whole business model was based on copyright, which again is based on government granted monopolies. But of course when the lives and health of people are involved the farce turns to tragedy.

xer0 15y ago
"This is precisely what patents are designed to do: create monopolies." That's half of what monopolies are supposed to do, in my layman's observation of the field (i.e. everything I know I learned on HN). The other half is to encourage the dissemination of innovation to the benefit of society. What we have now is the first half, the monopoly. The second half is disappearing, replaced by patent holders preventing innovation from moving through society, and removing the use of what was once obvious from society.

Symmetry 15y ago

Better to just fix the damn patent system rather than trying to add another patch on top of it, I think. If you're going to have compulsory licensing how do you figure out what the fee should be? Having the government set the prices of a good or service is always tempting, but it's usually tended to work out badly historically[1]. Better to fix the injustice at the source. [1] For example, through medicare reimbursement rates the government strongly influences the pay rates of different types of doctors, and mandates that the gap in wages between a GP and a specialist be about twice what it is in other countries, which results in the US having lots of specialists but a huge lack of GPs compared to other countries, which means we do a very poor job of catching problems early, etc. EDIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource-based_relative_value_scale http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource-based_relative_value_s...

einhverfr 15y ago
My preferred solution would be to require all patentholders to offer reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing policies with their patent applications going forward, but with the caveat that medical devices and drugs would have license fee ceilings set by Congress (needed for cost control). This is not a patch on the patent system. This is a fundamental change in moving from a monopoly grant to a grant of rent for research. This is a huge change. I'd be willing to trade moderate extension of patent terms (say to 25 years) to accomplish this.