>Please explain how, without patents, a company would choose to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to discovery a new molecule and get it approved, when ano

>Please explain how, without patents, a company would choose to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to discovery a new molecule and get it approved, when another company could start selling it as well without any of the investment at all? >Financially it makes zero sense. Innovations in funding, protection of secrets etc do happen time to time, so even if I cannot give you satisfying answer now, it does not mean such answer does not exist. It took thousands of years to invent modern corporation and stock exchange. Cryptocurrencies are recent invention. Imagine some sort of pooled research, where all competitors/partners agree to compete only after the discovery, i.e. in production efficiency and costs, marketing etc, with some . Imagine some clever chemical engineering, where a pill is such a mixture of acting substance and harmless components that reverse engineering is too hard to complete without comparable budget. Maybe it will be something completely different that we will find obvious only after it is discovered.