4 ms·

I don't think this true of all patents. Patents for drugs are obviously necessary in the current environment. But software patents are definitely bogus.

contravariant 3y ago
I agree that it is the obvious choice for medicine, but is it really the best option? Do we really have no other methods to fund medicine? Is it worth prioritising new patentable discoveries over other ones like making drugs cheaper or using them more effectively?
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  "Do we really have no other methods to fund medicine? " We have. Public funded (also via universities) and donation based research. But investment money is kind of big and if it would suddenly disappear, it will hurt current research as most (?) of it is dependant on it. But all that money would not necessarily disappear, when patents suddelny gets abolished, as there is also the option of increased secrecy. Meaning they make effective pills, and work with regulators to test them - but share little about the manufacturing process. I believe that is already happening to some extent, but would likely increase a lot.
  - kelnos 3y ago
    That public funding has to come from somewhere, though, to the tune of quite a few billions of dollars. Do we really believe the tax increases required will be palatable to voters, and politically possible for elected officials? In the US, we can't even get universal public-funded healthcare. Not sure the increased secrecy would help all that much. Is drug manufacturing that complicated that a motivated company could not reverse engineer a new drug solely from its off-the-shelf product, without too much trouble?
    - flangola7 3y ago
      Where is that money coming from right now? Ultimately it's still coming out of the average person's pocket.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - LorenPechtel 3y ago
    I think the current system probably funds it about as well as we could do. We get a bunch of startups attempting to push one drug through--succeed and it's a big payoff for it's investors, fail and they lose their investment. It's actually a bad bet for investors so it moves money from overly optimistic investors to the public. We do have problems elsewhere in the system, though: 1) Drug ads. They should be pretty much nuked from orbit. Drugs are a medical decision, any promotion activities should be directed at doctors, not patients. I would make an exception for drugs that radically improve treatment for something patients might have considered something they just have to live with and not told their doctors about. (I have Viagra in mind here--and that's the only one that comes to mind.) In such a case I would only permit "there is a new treatment for X, talk to your doctor", no names of either the drug or the company. 2) Dodgy approval decisions. The recent Alzheimer's drug comes to mind. 3) Drug companies should not be able to find out what doctors prescribe. That creates a conflict of interest. 4) I question whether drug makers should even be allowed to do the phase III testing at all. That puts the researchers in a position where a no decision could be bad for them down the road. On the flip side, I think we could benefit from having an appears-to-work type of approval. It would require extensive real-world use data (either from foreign use or like what we have seen with marijuana being widely used for chemotherapy nausea) but not the usual approval process. Obviously, no patents, but all companies selling it would be required to put some specified percent of sales into a pool used to fund more research. (And I wouldn't mind doing something like that for all drugs, albeit at a lower percentage. Every drug has say a 5% tax that goes into a FDA account for that drug. When there's enough money in the account to fund useful research about it the FDA does so. Common off-label uses would be prime candidates for such studies.)
downWidOutaFite 3y ago
Not sure why drug patents are obviously necessary. There are tons of issues with them including big pharma gaming the system to keep drugs protected for decades.
- brutusborn 3y ago
  Without patents existing, who would pay for the trials required to bring a drug to market?
ImHereToVote 3y ago
Well obviously. How else could publicly funded research be price gouged?
- yebyen 3y ago
  "Obviously." I like how this is the argument for drug patents, and if you don't just simply agree with this, the only real other option is to accuse the person arguing that it "obviously" is the right decision of arguing in bad faith. ...because it's an argument in bad faith? I too don't see why drug patents are "obvious" or clear case that it is helpful enough to be in the public interest to maintain drug patents. Is there any evidence that drug patents can actually enter the public domain productively at their end of their expiration period? I mean, if James Collip and Charles Best sold the insulin patent to the University of Toronto for a mere $1 each, "so that everyone could have it" and we still don't have universal low-cost insulin over 100 years later, and prices continue to skyrocket, I'm more inclined to believe that for-profit medicine is just evil.
  - CodesInChaos 3y ago
    I believe the original insulin is cheaply available. But newer, faster acting, variants which are easier to administer are still patented.
    - yebyen 3y ago
      I don't know much about it honestly, but this article that talks about PBMs is very interesting: https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2023/eli-lilly-lowers-insulin-prices https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2023/eli-lilly-lowers-insulin-p... > “Even though they're dropping their list price by 70% and capping their cost to patients at $35, it’s important for us to make this very, very clear—the company is still making a profit,” ... > During a 2019 congressional hearing, insulin makers admitted that there’s pressure to keep list prices high so that PBMs can also profit. > PBMs favor the drugs that will yield them higher profits. By lowering prices, Lilly runs the risk of being excluded from formularies, meaning the insurance companies will no longer cover the product for their patients.
sleepybrett 3y ago
Except that they are excessively gamed with reformulations.
monocasa 3y ago
It's funny, the people I know in biotech say the opposite, that biotech patents are bogus but they don't think they'd be able to get rid of the system because of how much traditional tech relies on them. Their minds are blown when I tell them how much of an issue they are for us in traditional tech too.
- orangesite 3y ago
  The default narratives used to justify questionable industry practices fall apart so quickly when we engage in even the smallest amount of inter-disciplinary dialogue. I'd love to see more of this.
mughinn 3y ago
I'm not sure about "obviously necessary", but they are one of the few cases where they may be somewhat justified
cycomanic 3y ago
It is funny that pharma is always brought up as an example for industries where patents "obviously" make sense. Pharma is in fact a pretty good example why patents don't make sense and hinder innovation. Historically, before the homogenization of IP law, pharmaceuticals had different patent protection in different countries, ranging from very strong (the US), to weak (most of Europe) to excluded (Switzerland). The most successful and innovative pharma companies who were outspending everyone else on R&D were from Switzerland. Patentability of pharmaceuticals suddenly gave US companies a big boost and was really a lobbying success, so they managed to gain strong market positions without much innovation.
- brutusborn 3y ago
  Do you have a link to an article or book that covers this? I’m trying to workout why Swiss companies would outspend the rest, is it that patents incentivise sitting on your laurels? And did drugs require the huge testing they need now?
- JamesBarney 3y ago
  The cost of FDA approval was at least an order of magnitude lower back then. Why would anyone spend a billion dollars getting a drug FDA approved if after they do anyone else can manufacturer it?
  - jsmith45 3y ago
    You still need FDA approval to develop a generic. The FDA will not approvea generic unless both the patents and other legal exclusivities (I think the FDA sometimes grants exclusivity beyonbd the end of the patent). If patents were abolished, the FDA could instead be authorized to blanket grant such exclusivity to genuinely new drugs, with pretty much the same effect as patents.

contravariant 3y ago

I agree that it is the obvious choice for medicine, but is it really the best option? Do we really have no other methods to fund medicine? Is it worth prioritising new patentable discoveries over other ones like making drugs cheaper or using them more effectively?

hutzlibu 3y ago
"Do we really have no other methods to fund medicine? " We have. Public funded (also via universities) and donation based research. But investment money is kind of big and if it would suddenly disappear, it will hurt current research as most (?) of it is dependant on it. But all that money would not necessarily disappear, when patents suddelny gets abolished, as there is also the option of increased secrecy. Meaning they make effective pills, and work with regulators to test them - but share little about the manufacturing process. I believe that is already happening to some extent, but would likely increase a lot.
- kelnos 3y ago
  That public funding has to come from somewhere, though, to the tune of quite a few billions of dollars. Do we really believe the tax increases required will be palatable to voters, and politically possible for elected officials? In the US, we can't even get universal public-funded healthcare. Not sure the increased secrecy would help all that much. Is drug manufacturing that complicated that a motivated company could not reverse engineer a new drug solely from its off-the-shelf product, without too much trouble?
  - flangola7 3y ago
    Where is that money coming from right now? Ultimately it's still coming out of the average person's pocket.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- LorenPechtel 3y ago
  I think the current system probably funds it about as well as we could do. We get a bunch of startups attempting to push one drug through--succeed and it's a big payoff for it's investors, fail and they lose their investment. It's actually a bad bet for investors so it moves money from overly optimistic investors to the public. We do have problems elsewhere in the system, though: 1) Drug ads. They should be pretty much nuked from orbit. Drugs are a medical decision, any promotion activities should be directed at doctors, not patients. I would make an exception for drugs that radically improve treatment for something patients might have considered something they just have to live with and not told their doctors about. (I have Viagra in mind here--and that's the only one that comes to mind.) In such a case I would only permit "there is a new treatment for X, talk to your doctor", no names of either the drug or the company. 2) Dodgy approval decisions. The recent Alzheimer's drug comes to mind. 3) Drug companies should not be able to find out what doctors prescribe. That creates a conflict of interest. 4) I question whether drug makers should even be allowed to do the phase III testing at all. That puts the researchers in a position where a no decision could be bad for them down the road. On the flip side, I think we could benefit from having an appears-to-work type of approval. It would require extensive real-world use data (either from foreign use or like what we have seen with marijuana being widely used for chemotherapy nausea) but not the usual approval process. Obviously, no patents, but all companies selling it would be required to put some specified percent of sales into a pool used to fund more research. (And I wouldn't mind doing something like that for all drugs, albeit at a lower percentage. Every drug has say a 5% tax that goes into a FDA account for that drug. When there's enough money in the account to fund useful research about it the FDA does so. Common off-label uses would be prime candidates for such studies.)

downWidOutaFite 3y ago

Not sure why drug patents are obviously necessary. There are tons of issues with them including big pharma gaming the system to keep drugs protected for decades.

brutusborn 3y ago
Without patents existing, who would pay for the trials required to bring a drug to market?

ImHereToVote 3y ago

Well obviously. How else could publicly funded research be price gouged?

yebyen 3y ago
"Obviously." I like how this is the argument for drug patents, and if you don't just simply agree with this, the only real other option is to accuse the person arguing that it "obviously" is the right decision of arguing in bad faith. ...because it's an argument in bad faith? I too don't see why drug patents are "obvious" or clear case that it is helpful enough to be in the public interest to maintain drug patents. Is there any evidence that drug patents can actually enter the public domain productively at their end of their expiration period? I mean, if James Collip and Charles Best sold the insulin patent to the University of Toronto for a mere $1 each, "so that everyone could have it" and we still don't have universal low-cost insulin over 100 years later, and prices continue to skyrocket, I'm more inclined to believe that for-profit medicine is just evil.
- CodesInChaos 3y ago
  I believe the original insulin is cheaply available. But newer, faster acting, variants which are easier to administer are still patented.
  - yebyen 3y ago
    I don't know much about it honestly, but this article that talks about PBMs is very interesting: https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2023/eli-lilly-lowers-insulin-prices https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2023/eli-lilly-lowers-insulin-p... > “Even though they're dropping their list price by 70% and capping their cost to patients at $35, it’s important for us to make this very, very clear—the company is still making a profit,” ... > During a 2019 congressional hearing, insulin makers admitted that there’s pressure to keep list prices high so that PBMs can also profit. > PBMs favor the drugs that will yield them higher profits. By lowering prices, Lilly runs the risk of being excluded from formularies, meaning the insurance companies will no longer cover the product for their patients.

sleepybrett 3y ago

Except that they are excessively gamed with reformulations.

monocasa 3y ago

It's funny, the people I know in biotech say the opposite, that biotech patents are bogus but they don't think they'd be able to get rid of the system because of how much traditional tech relies on them. Their minds are blown when I tell them how much of an issue they are for us in traditional tech too.

orangesite 3y ago
The default narratives used to justify questionable industry practices fall apart so quickly when we engage in even the smallest amount of inter-disciplinary dialogue. I'd love to see more of this.

mughinn 3y ago

I'm not sure about "obviously necessary", but they are one of the few cases where they may be somewhat justified

cycomanic 3y ago

It is funny that pharma is always brought up as an example for industries where patents "obviously" make sense. Pharma is in fact a pretty good example why patents don't make sense and hinder innovation. Historically, before the homogenization of IP law, pharmaceuticals had different patent protection in different countries, ranging from very strong (the US), to weak (most of Europe) to excluded (Switzerland). The most successful and innovative pharma companies who were outspending everyone else on R&D were from Switzerland. Patentability of pharmaceuticals suddenly gave US companies a big boost and was really a lobbying success, so they managed to gain strong market positions without much innovation.

brutusborn 3y ago
Do you have a link to an article or book that covers this? I’m trying to workout why Swiss companies would outspend the rest, is it that patents incentivise sitting on your laurels? And did drugs require the huge testing they need now?
JamesBarney 3y ago
The cost of FDA approval was at least an order of magnitude lower back then. Why would anyone spend a billion dollars getting a drug FDA approved if after they do anyone else can manufacturer it?
- jsmith45 3y ago
  You still need FDA approval to develop a generic. The FDA will not approvea generic unless both the patents and other legal exclusivities (I think the FDA sometimes grants exclusivity beyonbd the end of the patent). If patents were abolished, the FDA could instead be authorized to blanket grant such exclusivity to genuinely new drugs, with pretty much the same effect as patents.