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But the patent covers the result of years of research, not the original idea, or does it? I don't know how drugs are actually developed, but I cannot imagine th
by codeflo 14y ago
But the patent covers the result of years of research, not the original idea, or does it? I don't know how drugs are actually developed, but I cannot imagine that someone goes, "Gee, I have this awesome idea: C33H35FN2O5! Now let's see what it's good for."
- pcrh 14y agoThe point I intended to make was that a patent describes an invention, and has clear requirements for novelty and non-obviousness. Clearly the money made from Lipitor required FDA approval, etc, etc, which is the execution. However, without the initial inventive step, which was non-obvious there would have been no patent, and fewer profits to be made. My other point is that truly good ideas are very rare indeed, an idea whose execution is too difficult does not count as a "good" idea.
- incision 14y agoI'm confused. To me: Lowering cholesterol with drugs is an idea. Lipitor is an effective, workable execution of that idea. Qualifying an idea with "executability" makes it an invention.
- pcrh 14y agoWithout a doubt there was a string of novel ideas that eventually lead to Lipitor itself [1]. It is absurd in this context to say that those ideas were "worthless", and execution was everything. Indeed, if there were no novel ideas on the road to Lipitor, it couldn't have been patented. I am only using patents to illustrate both that "ideas" are worth something, and also that it is actually very hard to have a truly good and original idea. (The WWW is another example of a great idea) Most people's "great ideas" are really not that great at all. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statin#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statin#History