5 ms·

All patents? Really? What about drug patents or things like 3M's Post-It Notes. These are items easily duplicated but born out of healthy spending on R&D.

axod 18y ago
Will companies stop spending R&D if they can't patent the outcome? I don't think they would. I think they'd find another way to 'lock-in' - such as providing better value, or a better product.
- jnorthrop 18y ago
  I think particularly in the case of pharmaceuticals that would certainly be the case. Why spend all of that time and effort to find an effective and safe cure if all you need to do is sit on the sidelines until someone else comes up with it. At that point all you need to do is simply reverse engineer it and produce it yourself. The ability to copy someone else's work would dramatically lower the reward for the companies. Ultimately leading to the business decision that it isn't worth investing in R&D.
  - tdavis 18y ago
    Pharmaceutical companies already employ ridiculous markup on everything simply because they can. You could argue, they need to recoup R&D, and that's fine. And companies are entitled to profiting from their hard work, but come on. Charging $12,000 for a treatment that costs $500 to create? Maybe instead of abolishing patents entirely, they should be time-release. I don't know how that would be calculated, but something that allowed companies to exploit their research for a certain period of time, at which point anybody is free to reverse engineer it and do it themselves. Somebody patents de-boning a turkey in 1990; almost 20 years later I am still unable to legally de-bone a turkey for profit! Ridiculous!
    - ams6110 18y ago
      Patents do expire, that's the whole point. The government will protect your idea for you for a period of time, in exchange for making it public. After that time expires, others are free to copy the idea -- that's how generic drugs come to market. You understate the costs of pharmacutical R&D. Most ideas fail, or do more harm than good. Of those that show some promise, there are extensive animal and then human clinical trials. More ideas wash out here. Laboratories cost money. Researchers cost money. Trials cost money. Defending class action lawsuits costs money. Comparing the cost of the raw ingredients to the retail price ignores a whole bunch of stuff.
      - axod 18y ago
        Yeah maybe medicine shouldn't be "business". Maybe it should be something gasp provided by the government for the common good. ;) For some reason we seem perfectly content spending billions on armies+tanks, but don't see the need to spend on medicine. Bizarre.
        icey 18y ago
        Just out of curiosity, any stats of how much medicine research gets done in places with socialized medicine? I could be wrong, but it seems to me a significant portion of new drugs come from the American market.
        mblakele 18y ago
        This is off-topic, but the US does spend billions on health care. Take a look at http://wikileaks.org/leak/crs/RL34175.pdf http://wikileaks.org/leak/crs/RL34175.pdf (Congressional Research Service RL34175). In 2004 the US spent 15.3% of GDP on health care, more than any other developed country. Of this, almost 44% was public money. Switzerland was #2 with 11.6% (58% public), and the OECD median was 8.8% (74% public). The US is unusual in that it spends as much public money per capita as most OECD countries do, and then turns around and spends even more private money. Is US health care really worth spending that extra 6-7% of GDP? The life-expectancy figures don't support it. The main benefit seems to be that US patients don't have to wait as long for operations as those in other countries do.
tdavis 18y ago
I think 3M already has the Post-It market cornered. If there were no patent, a new-comer who just copied them wholesale would likely have a hard time making a significant dent in the market. Unless they priced them significantly lower, forcing 3M to go lower, until you get to a point where all commodities are actually priced as such. Wouldn't that suck? ;)
- jamesbritt 18y ago
  My local Walgreen's offers numerous products that are essentially knock-offs of name brand items. For example, I prefer Edge gel shaving cream; the particular one I like has an orange cap, a black can, and some colored logo lettering stuff. The Walgreen knock-off looks damn near identical. I bought it once by mistake, and thought, hey, maybe I'm a chump paying for the brand name. But it wasn't as good. (The gel itself was possibly as good, but the packaging sucked and it wouldn't dispense correctly after a some usage). For many items it is very easy to join the market, and having a patent may be the only way to secure a lead over poor imitations.

axod 18y ago

Will companies stop spending R&D if they can't patent the outcome? I don't think they would. I think they'd find another way to 'lock-in' - such as providing better value, or a better product.

jnorthrop 18y ago
I think particularly in the case of pharmaceuticals that would certainly be the case. Why spend all of that time and effort to find an effective and safe cure if all you need to do is sit on the sidelines until someone else comes up with it. At that point all you need to do is simply reverse engineer it and produce it yourself. The ability to copy someone else's work would dramatically lower the reward for the companies. Ultimately leading to the business decision that it isn't worth investing in R&D.
- tdavis 18y ago
  Pharmaceutical companies already employ ridiculous markup on everything simply because they can. You could argue, they need to recoup R&D, and that's fine. And companies are entitled to profiting from their hard work, but come on. Charging $12,000 for a treatment that costs $500 to create? Maybe instead of abolishing patents entirely, they should be time-release. I don't know how that would be calculated, but something that allowed companies to exploit their research for a certain period of time, at which point anybody is free to reverse engineer it and do it themselves. Somebody patents de-boning a turkey in 1990; almost 20 years later I am still unable to legally de-bone a turkey for profit! Ridiculous!
  - ams6110 18y ago
    Patents do expire, that's the whole point. The government will protect your idea for you for a period of time, in exchange for making it public. After that time expires, others are free to copy the idea -- that's how generic drugs come to market. You understate the costs of pharmacutical R&D. Most ideas fail, or do more harm than good. Of those that show some promise, there are extensive animal and then human clinical trials. More ideas wash out here. Laboratories cost money. Researchers cost money. Trials cost money. Defending class action lawsuits costs money. Comparing the cost of the raw ingredients to the retail price ignores a whole bunch of stuff.
    - axod 18y ago
      Yeah maybe medicine shouldn't be "business". Maybe it should be something gasp provided by the government for the common good. ;) For some reason we seem perfectly content spending billions on armies+tanks, but don't see the need to spend on medicine. Bizarre.
      - icey 18y ago
        Just out of curiosity, any stats of how much medicine research gets done in places with socialized medicine? I could be wrong, but it seems to me a significant portion of new drugs come from the American market.
      - mblakele 18y ago
        This is off-topic, but the US does spend billions on health care. Take a look at http://wikileaks.org/leak/crs/RL34175.pdf http://wikileaks.org/leak/crs/RL34175.pdf (Congressional Research Service RL34175). In 2004 the US spent 15.3% of GDP on health care, more than any other developed country. Of this, almost 44% was public money. Switzerland was #2 with 11.6% (58% public), and the OECD median was 8.8% (74% public). The US is unusual in that it spends as much public money per capita as most OECD countries do, and then turns around and spends even more private money. Is US health care really worth spending that extra 6-7% of GDP? The life-expectancy figures don't support it. The main benefit seems to be that US patients don't have to wait as long for operations as those in other countries do.

tdavis 18y ago

I think 3M already has the Post-It market cornered. If there were no patent, a new-comer who just copied them wholesale would likely have a hard time making a significant dent in the market. Unless they priced them significantly lower, forcing 3M to go lower, until you get to a point where all commodities are actually priced as such. Wouldn't that suck? ;)

jamesbritt 18y ago
My local Walgreen's offers numerous products that are essentially knock-offs of name brand items. For example, I prefer Edge gel shaving cream; the particular one I like has an orange cap, a black can, and some colored logo lettering stuff. The Walgreen knock-off looks damn near identical. I bought it once by mistake, and thought, hey, maybe I'm a chump paying for the brand name. But it wasn't as good. (The gel itself was possibly as good, but the packaging sucked and it wouldn't dispense correctly after a some usage). For many items it is very easy to join the market, and having a patent may be the only way to secure a lead over poor imitations.