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Not trolling. I work in biotech. This industry lives and dies on IP. It literally costs hundreds of millions of dollars to run clinical trials and most of th
by roadnottaken 14y ago
Not trolling. I work in biotech. This industry lives and dies on IP. It literally costs hundreds of millions of dollars to run clinical trials and most of them fail. If someone else can come along and make a knock-off of your product and steal your profit then there's no incentive to run them. The whole model of the pharmaceutical industry relies on ~15-20 years of patent protection. People certainly play games with patents in biopharma, too, but without some form of IP protection you wouldn't get new drugs. Simple as that.
- jivatmanx 14y agoNew drugs are an extremely specific and limited case of Patents, a chemical formula. If Biotech worked the way software did, you would be able to patent "A combination of chemicals inside of a pill that cures headaches".
- distant-uncle 14y agoVery true. Or even just: "A combination of chemicals". What I also find remarkable is how much actual research in biotech is done with public money. And how much big pharma spends on marketing, as opposed to actual research. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/09/pharmaceutical-companies-marketing_n_1760380.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/09/pharmaceutical-comp... I think India's take on pharma products is enlightening. The pharma industry has managed to effect some self-serving changes in India's patent laws. However, as we speak the Supreme Court of India is hearing a case of particular interest. http://theconversation.edu.au/david-and-goliath-novartis-challenges-indias-patent-law-9880 http://theconversation.edu.au/david-and-goliath-novartis-cha...
- cloverich 14y ago"A combination of chemicals inside of a pill that cures headaches" Oh my god. That is a terrific analogy. I regularly talk to people who don't understand the horror of software patents and have been trying to come up with a good example - this is perfect.