5 ms·

> Abolish Intellectual Property. Period. > IP's time (if there ever was one) is over. There is no benefit for real inventors and artists anymore, merely for me

> Abolish Intellectual Property. Period. > IP's time (if there ever was one) is over. There is no benefit for real inventors and artists anymore, merely for mega corporations to use the levers of government to maximize their profits at the expense of humanity and freedom. Nothing "intellectual" should be property. > I'm not against corporations or even mega corporations. I think they'd do better for themselves (and their users, more importantly) if they didn't waste years and $billions battling each other and bullying startups and individuals over IP. Instead, they should just focus of making better things. > [Quotation] This sounds like a noble rallying cry but is ultimately misguided. How does this system reconcile with the incentive structures inherent in pharmaceutical research and drug design?

harshreality 13y ago
Pharma is a special case. Can we separate IP into pharma and -other- and deal with them separately? Pharma "development" might be done by academics who get bought out by big pharma after their discovery, or it might be done originally by big pharma. Should pharma IP be protected so they can inflate prices to pad the bank accounts of the inventors even though they were operating in academia at the time of invention? Pharma costs involve (a) cost to discover a drug, (b) cost to do drug trials, including all bureaucratic red tape in getting the drug approved, and (c) advertising and marketing (both to prospective patients and to the medical establishment). From what I've read, advertising costs exceed R&D. Surely, IP monopoly pricing should not be able to pass along arbitrary marketing costs. Some drugs are prescribed for serious health problems, some drugs are prescribed and taken on a more voluntary basis, and there's a gray area in between. Should IP owners be able to set arbitrary profit margins for drugs for more serious health problems? Who decides what's serious? The incentives for much of the pharma industry are all wrong: they market to doctors and potential end-users, even though end users are rarely capable of evaluating drugs, and even though doctors are influenced by marketing directed at them. This isn't so much a cost issue (other than advertising costs, above) but rather a public health issue. Some drugs might not be in the public's interest at all, even while being recommended by doctors, and paid for at inflated prices by patients and insurance companies. There are so many complications, I'm in favor of dealing with pharma IP separately.
- rgbrenner 13y ago
  You only addressed part of the problem. The OP said IP.. so we're talking about trademarks in addition to patents. The pharma companies would lose the ability to patent a drug.. which means they would keep it a tradesecret instead. So generic may or may not be able to be produced. Second: without trademarks, pharma companies could invent Prilosec... and I (and anyone else) could sell a sugar pill named Prilosec. Or rat poison named Prilosec.. or any number of other items named Prilosec. This is not a result that is in anyones favor.
  - fishy929 13y ago
    People would still be free to use and purchase based on the generic chemical name. Furthermore, I would consider tradesecrets a form of IP so, if we are considering a scenario in which IP were abolished, tradesecrets would be abolished too in the sense that they would be afforded no legal protections. True, a formula or process could still be kept secret, but without protection for that secrecy it seems unlikely that real innovations would remain secret for long and market competition would increase as a result.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
- argumentum 13y ago
  I agree with you generally, but why is it a special case? As you said,tThe problem isn't the cost to deliver a drug. There are over 100k "potentially useful" new chemicals synthesized by university labs every year. One or two are brought to market. The cost is in the red tape, and doing the clinical trials to satisfy regulations. I agree, we'd have to get rid of that. But treating it as a special case ensures that we'll just put off the subject indefinitely. IP corrupts everything it touches. Get rid of it, and we'll eliminate the problem at the source.
aric 13y ago
It reconciles by coping. It's better to deal with the harsh reality of peaceful commerce than it is to continually mold an economy with abysmal, suppressive, artificial constraints. Such laws are overwhelmingly wielded by large corporations: groups of protected people who afford patent war chests, suck up the relatively small patents "of the little guy," who gladly suffer constraints, and whose dominion grows parasitically with every law they bend in their direction. The answer for "incentivizing" progress has no clear path. But I know it should lie elsewhere from this current one, if we're to ever set our courses ethically. It must consist of peace. Peace means not using violence and not caging people just to mold corporate will. Incentives exist on one side. Many people are naturally driven to learn, research, create, and discover. On the other side, that doesn't solve the economic drivers that act as a backbone. Obviously, that's where your question is focused. Given less control by corporations, I imagine time-to-market, mover advantage, and trade recognition would still be enough to create a very fertile economy. It would hardly lack in the catalysts that dive manufacturing and profit-based prospects and motives. I'd argue that it would increase those conditions beyond just the net-health increase of market access. The major difference would be an economy that becomes more decentralized with fewer mega-corporations and more p2p trade. The pace of drug design would not necessarily slow. Motives and rewards behind drug design would nevertheless change and certain aspects of that would slow. I'm more sympathetic to trademark IP. Trademarks were a helpful stopgap against fraud in the evolution of the US economy. Yet, trademarks as we know them today could be logically disbanded in the future if the means which which to prove identities and dates of creation become more solidified into everyday life. Certain aspects of enforcement would probably linger on for consumer protection (e.g. selling exact, branded replicas of a product would be prohibited in areas where true confusion is likely to occur). I believe most people want to reward people and businesses who take chances, act transparently, and serve quality products and services, the more that information becomes readily flowing. Likewise, I believe most people want to disfavor the people who act fraudulently (presenting the works of others as their own). Ultimately, I'd rather society cope with the human potential that occurs without the limitations of patents, rather than society coping with the human potential that occurs with the limitations of patents. This philosophy may or may not lead to more net gains superficially. However, I think it leads to more gains rationally and ethically.
- 13y ago
argumentum 13y ago
I think we'd be a lot better off with much better medicine and medical treatments without IP. This is a whole other argument though, and I'll only engage if you want to.
- Snail_Commando 13y ago
  I strongly disagree with that. I spoke of the problems that abolishing pharmaceutical IP would cause in fundamental scientific research in my other comments on the thread. I could speak to the specific problems it would cause with respect to '[much better medicine] and '[medical treatments without ip], but I think those concepts are second order to the scientific research retardation problem. Please see my other two comments in the thread and let me know what you think: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7497975 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7497975 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7497872 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7497872
  - argumentum 13y ago
    Quick question: not that it affects your argument, but do you have experience in academic/industrial research? Reason I ask is not to ad-hominem you, just to see which arguments I should focus on. Here are the basics though: 1. Compound discovery happens mostly in academic research labs prior to patenting. This is published in journals (paid, but "open source"). 2. Wrt general scientific research, science has always been fine without patents: Einstein, Feynman and Co don't need financial incentive to do their best work, it's just what they do. 3. The role of pharmaceutical companies is fairly limited to clinical research, getting over regulatory hurdles and marketing. In a given year approx 100k potentially useful compounds will be discovered, but only a couple are approved by the FDA. Let me know what you'd like to argue about..
    - Snail_Commando 13y ago
      I do have experience in academic research. I'm not sure I agree with the assessment that pharmaceutical companies play a limited role in clinical research. > 3. The role of pharmaceutical companies is fairly limited to clinical research, getting over regulatory hurdles and marketing. In a given year approx 100k potentially useful compounds will be discovered, but only a couple are approved by the FDA. This glosses over almost the entire drug discovery process, which is a crucially important and nuanced process that yields new fundamental science. The positive scientific externalities of clinical trials are unambiguously a good thing. You are correct that much compound discovery happens in academic settings (though it does happen commercially as well.) Discovering the basic compound chemistry is just the first step. It must pass through a series of critical scientific assessments to see if the compound yields statistically significant desired biological effects. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phases_of_clinical_research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phases_of_clinical_research This process is the experimental phase of drug discovery. It involves hundreds to thousands of different researchers, participants, institutions, and explicit organizational dynamics. The cost must be borne and there must be incentive to bear the cost. My entire argument is that the patent system enables this incentive structure. > Wrt general scientific research, science has always been fine without patents: Einstein, Feynman and Co don't need financial incentive to do their best work, it's just what they do. This point speaks to a more abstract point that is useful to consider, not only in the pharmaceutical context, but in the context of what makes science: science. You are correct that fundamental theoretical science has always been fine without patents. The men and women who output some of our species' most beautiful interpretations of nature are rarely motivated by money. (I feel like that aspect of your argument was a bit of a non sequitur, I think all scientists are motivated by intrinsic knowledge, not money. I'm uncomfortable with my perception that you were implying that pharmaceutical scientists are somehow distinct from the examples you provided. Apologies if I misunderstood.) The distinction between the pharmaceutical industry and the fundamental work of Enstein, Feynman et al. is that the drug discovery process involves two major expressions of scientific thought: theoretical and experimental. In this case, the basic compound discovery would be an expression of theoretical science (and experimental work), which must in turn be validated by more experimental science: the clinical trial phases. In your example, it is true that Einstein, Feynman et al. did not need financial incentive to make immeasurable contributions to collective Good. They were doing priceless theoretical work, for what they are primarily known for. But (un)/fortunately, we need to do experimental science as well. Sadly, this cannot be done for free. To continue with the physics analogy, The Higgs boson was theorized "without financial incentive" prior to its experimental validation. Of course, the experimental validation cost billions of dollars and the output of one of the greatest feats of human engineering: the Large Hadron Collider. In this case, it was incredibly "expensive" (arguably, cost should be no object) to do this experimental validation. The cost was borne by government funding, ostensibly to increase the sum total of Knowledge. Of course, resources are limited. The government cannot fund all basic research. We have aligned market machinery to incentivize pharmaceutical companies to fund the incredibly "expensive" cost of drug discovery experimental validation. For better or worse. --------------------------- The premises to my argument: - experimental validation (the lion's share of the drug discovery process) is necessary - this process is expensive in terms of financial burden and opportunity cost - despite our intrinsic desire to do all research, we must allocate our resources accordingly - market actors in a (mostly) free market seek to maximize their utility - a market actor (in a market with no property rights) presented with the choice of: (a) spend X-Large sum -> manufacture + sell drug or (b) wait until other market actor spends X-Large sum -> manufacture + sell drug (at essentially zero input cost) ... can rationally wait to choose (b). My argument: - The pharmaceutical patent system provides the economic machinery necessary to incentivize private corporations to fund drug discovery experimental validation. The point of mutual confusion or "the basics" as you put it: The drug discovery process doesn't yield any meaningful scientific output, and is essentially an exercise in regulatory avoidance and marketing. I disagree with "the basics" that you laid out. I do want to say something explicitly: you've been very respectful and considerate and I really appreciate that. That's an increasingly rare thing on Hacker News.

harshreality 13y ago

Pharma is a special case. Can we separate IP into pharma and -other- and deal with them separately? Pharma "development" might be done by academics who get bought out by big pharma after their discovery, or it might be done originally by big pharma. Should pharma IP be protected so they can inflate prices to pad the bank accounts of the inventors even though they were operating in academia at the time of invention? Pharma costs involve (a) cost to discover a drug, (b) cost to do drug trials, including all bureaucratic red tape in getting the drug approved, and (c) advertising and marketing (both to prospective patients and to the medical establishment). From what I've read, advertising costs exceed R&D. Surely, IP monopoly pricing should not be able to pass along arbitrary marketing costs. Some drugs are prescribed for serious health problems, some drugs are prescribed and taken on a more voluntary basis, and there's a gray area in between. Should IP owners be able to set arbitrary profit margins for drugs for more serious health problems? Who decides what's serious? The incentives for much of the pharma industry are all wrong: they market to doctors and potential end-users, even though end users are rarely capable of evaluating drugs, and even though doctors are influenced by marketing directed at them. This isn't so much a cost issue (other than advertising costs, above) but rather a public health issue. Some drugs might not be in the public's interest at all, even while being recommended by doctors, and paid for at inflated prices by patients and insurance companies. There are so many complications, I'm in favor of dealing with pharma IP separately.

rgbrenner 13y ago
You only addressed part of the problem. The OP said IP.. so we're talking about trademarks in addition to patents. The pharma companies would lose the ability to patent a drug.. which means they would keep it a tradesecret instead. So generic may or may not be able to be produced. Second: without trademarks, pharma companies could invent Prilosec... and I (and anyone else) could sell a sugar pill named Prilosec. Or rat poison named Prilosec.. or any number of other items named Prilosec. This is not a result that is in anyones favor.
- fishy929 13y ago
  People would still be free to use and purchase based on the generic chemical name. Furthermore, I would consider tradesecrets a form of IP so, if we are considering a scenario in which IP were abolished, tradesecrets would be abolished too in the sense that they would be afforded no legal protections. True, a formula or process could still be kept secret, but without protection for that secrecy it seems unlikely that real innovations would remain secret for long and market competition would increase as a result.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
argumentum 13y ago
I agree with you generally, but why is it a special case? As you said,tThe problem isn't the cost to deliver a drug. There are over 100k "potentially useful" new chemicals synthesized by university labs every year. One or two are brought to market. The cost is in the red tape, and doing the clinical trials to satisfy regulations. I agree, we'd have to get rid of that. But treating it as a special case ensures that we'll just put off the subject indefinitely. IP corrupts everything it touches. Get rid of it, and we'll eliminate the problem at the source.

aric 13y ago

It reconciles by coping. It's better to deal with the harsh reality of peaceful commerce than it is to continually mold an economy with abysmal, suppressive, artificial constraints. Such laws are overwhelmingly wielded by large corporations: groups of protected people who afford patent war chests, suck up the relatively small patents "of the little guy," who gladly suffer constraints, and whose dominion grows parasitically with every law they bend in their direction. The answer for "incentivizing" progress has no clear path. But I know it should lie elsewhere from this current one, if we're to ever set our courses ethically. It must consist of peace. Peace means not using violence and not caging people just to mold corporate will. Incentives exist on one side. Many people are naturally driven to learn, research, create, and discover. On the other side, that doesn't solve the economic drivers that act as a backbone. Obviously, that's where your question is focused. Given less control by corporations, I imagine time-to-market, mover advantage, and trade recognition would still be enough to create a very fertile economy. It would hardly lack in the catalysts that dive manufacturing and profit-based prospects and motives. I'd argue that it would increase those conditions beyond just the net-health increase of market access. The major difference would be an economy that becomes more decentralized with fewer mega-corporations and more p2p trade. The pace of drug design would not necessarily slow. Motives and rewards behind drug design would nevertheless change and certain aspects of that would slow. I'm more sympathetic to trademark IP. Trademarks were a helpful stopgap against fraud in the evolution of the US economy. Yet, trademarks as we know them today could be logically disbanded in the future if the means which which to prove identities and dates of creation become more solidified into everyday life. Certain aspects of enforcement would probably linger on for consumer protection (e.g. selling exact, branded replicas of a product would be prohibited in areas where true confusion is likely to occur). I believe most people want to reward people and businesses who take chances, act transparently, and serve quality products and services, the more that information becomes readily flowing. Likewise, I believe most people want to disfavor the people who act fraudulently (presenting the works of others as their own). Ultimately, I'd rather society cope with the human potential that occurs without the limitations of patents, rather than society coping with the human potential that occurs with the limitations of patents. This philosophy may or may not lead to more net gains superficially. However, I think it leads to more gains rationally and ethically.

13y ago

argumentum 13y ago

I think we'd be a lot better off with much better medicine and medical treatments without IP. This is a whole other argument though, and I'll only engage if you want to.

Snail_Commando 13y ago
I strongly disagree with that. I spoke of the problems that abolishing pharmaceutical IP would cause in fundamental scientific research in my other comments on the thread. I could speak to the specific problems it would cause with respect to '[much better medicine] and '[medical treatments without ip], but I think those concepts are second order to the scientific research retardation problem. Please see my other two comments in the thread and let me know what you think: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7497975 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7497975 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7497872 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7497872
- argumentum 13y ago
  Quick question: not that it affects your argument, but do you have experience in academic/industrial research? Reason I ask is not to ad-hominem you, just to see which arguments I should focus on. Here are the basics though: 1. Compound discovery happens mostly in academic research labs prior to patenting. This is published in journals (paid, but "open source"). 2. Wrt general scientific research, science has always been fine without patents: Einstein, Feynman and Co don't need financial incentive to do their best work, it's just what they do. 3. The role of pharmaceutical companies is fairly limited to clinical research, getting over regulatory hurdles and marketing. In a given year approx 100k potentially useful compounds will be discovered, but only a couple are approved by the FDA. Let me know what you'd like to argue about..
  - Snail_Commando 13y ago
    I do have experience in academic research. I'm not sure I agree with the assessment that pharmaceutical companies play a limited role in clinical research. > 3. The role of pharmaceutical companies is fairly limited to clinical research, getting over regulatory hurdles and marketing. In a given year approx 100k potentially useful compounds will be discovered, but only a couple are approved by the FDA. This glosses over almost the entire drug discovery process, which is a crucially important and nuanced process that yields new fundamental science. The positive scientific externalities of clinical trials are unambiguously a good thing. You are correct that much compound discovery happens in academic settings (though it does happen commercially as well.) Discovering the basic compound chemistry is just the first step. It must pass through a series of critical scientific assessments to see if the compound yields statistically significant desired biological effects. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phases_of_clinical_research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phases_of_clinical_research This process is the experimental phase of drug discovery. It involves hundreds to thousands of different researchers, participants, institutions, and explicit organizational dynamics. The cost must be borne and there must be incentive to bear the cost. My entire argument is that the patent system enables this incentive structure. > Wrt general scientific research, science has always been fine without patents: Einstein, Feynman and Co don't need financial incentive to do their best work, it's just what they do. This point speaks to a more abstract point that is useful to consider, not only in the pharmaceutical context, but in the context of what makes science: science. You are correct that fundamental theoretical science has always been fine without patents. The men and women who output some of our species' most beautiful interpretations of nature are rarely motivated by money. (I feel like that aspect of your argument was a bit of a non sequitur, I think all scientists are motivated by intrinsic knowledge, not money. I'm uncomfortable with my perception that you were implying that pharmaceutical scientists are somehow distinct from the examples you provided. Apologies if I misunderstood.) The distinction between the pharmaceutical industry and the fundamental work of Enstein, Feynman et al. is that the drug discovery process involves two major expressions of scientific thought: theoretical and experimental. In this case, the basic compound discovery would be an expression of theoretical science (and experimental work), which must in turn be validated by more experimental science: the clinical trial phases. In your example, it is true that Einstein, Feynman et al. did not need financial incentive to make immeasurable contributions to collective Good. They were doing priceless theoretical work, for what they are primarily known for. But (un)/fortunately, we need to do experimental science as well. Sadly, this cannot be done for free. To continue with the physics analogy, The Higgs boson was theorized "without financial incentive" prior to its experimental validation. Of course, the experimental validation cost billions of dollars and the output of one of the greatest feats of human engineering: the Large Hadron Collider. In this case, it was incredibly "expensive" (arguably, cost should be no object) to do this experimental validation. The cost was borne by government funding, ostensibly to increase the sum total of Knowledge. Of course, resources are limited. The government cannot fund all basic research. We have aligned market machinery to incentivize pharmaceutical companies to fund the incredibly "expensive" cost of drug discovery experimental validation. For better or worse. --------------------------- The premises to my argument: - experimental validation (the lion's share of the drug discovery process) is necessary - this process is expensive in terms of financial burden and opportunity cost - despite our intrinsic desire to do all research, we must allocate our resources accordingly - market actors in a (mostly) free market seek to maximize their utility - a market actor (in a market with no property rights) presented with the choice of: (a) spend X-Large sum -> manufacture + sell drug or (b) wait until other market actor spends X-Large sum -> manufacture + sell drug (at essentially zero input cost) ... can rationally wait to choose (b). My argument: - The pharmaceutical patent system provides the economic machinery necessary to incentivize private corporations to fund drug discovery experimental validation. The point of mutual confusion or "the basics" as you put it: The drug discovery process doesn't yield any meaningful scientific output, and is essentially an exercise in regulatory avoidance and marketing. I disagree with "the basics" that you laid out. I do want to say something explicitly: you've been very respectful and considerate and I really appreciate that. That's an increasingly rare thing on Hacker News.