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> The reason is (or should be) to protect any investment that went into the invention; for the benefit of society as a whole - to make sure expensive research i

> The reason is (or should be) to protect any investment that went into the invention; for the benefit of society as a whole - to make sure expensive research is still going to happen. This is critical. Not just to enable expensive investment, but to create an incentive structure that encourages scientific research that remains in the public domain. This is a critical point that people often miss in these arguments. In computerland, we don't come up with new computer science every time we program an application. In pharmaceutical land, you literally have to come up with new science to make a new drug. Let's not forget that, as software developers, our perspective and opinions on patents are not fungible across all domains. The patent system in the pharmaceutical industry enables a healthy drug research and design market with proper incentive structures. Abolishing patents in the pharmaceutical industry would retard research, skew incentives, and encourage trade secrets. A patent free system would most likely result in a system of trade secrecy. Companies would not share their results, they would keep the secret formula to themselves. It would result in perpetual proprietary lockdowns. After all, why make public the concept that you just spent billions of dollars and years of opportunity cost on? So that competitors can manufacture the drug at essentially zero cost? Nah, we'll just keep that to ourselves, thank you very much. Trade secrets are a threat to science. You cannot build a foundation of science on a platform eaten away by trade secrecy. Trade secrecy will deprive humanity of the positive externalities of a significant chunk of pharmaceutical research. As developers, we see patents as a threat. A sharp implement of the greedy. In the pharmaceutical world, patents are a necessary rung in the ladder of human advancement. Yes, it doesn't always feel good to climb this ladder (consumer drug prices) but without it- there would just be a scrum of companies scrambling to climb up the research pole, each trampling each other's investment returns (incentive) to zero. They'd get bruised and go find easier poles to climb up. Yes, the patent system in the pharmaceutical industry has flaws. But it is the best thing we have given the alternatives. If you are interested, please see see my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7497872 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7497872

linuxhansl 13y ago
Thanks, and I completely agree with you. It wasn't clear from my post, but patents are obviously important, just not to protect everybody's random ideas. That is why it so important to make the point about the investment. In the pharmaceutical industry (and others) there is upfront cost and that should be encouraged and subsequently protected for some time. I still have some philosophical reservations about patenting facts i.e. "this gene does that"; yet I think that is not avoidable. The "Is society as a whole served" question, to me is the paramount criterion. How to establish that for a particular invention, I do not know.
Snail_Commando 13y ago
Edit: I'm mostly retracting my original comment below, my argument is flawed. See my sibling comment. ---------------------------------------------------------- Here is probably a better version of my argument: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7498742 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7498742 Essentially, pharmaceutical clinical trials yield experimental results (new science), they are expensive (need incentive to take the risk), and any system that prevents execution of, or obfuscates the results of, the clinical trial phase is a threat to science. Maybe there is a better system than the patent system but it's the best system we have right now, given the alternatives. It could certainly be improved, maybe even replaced, but abolishing it wholesale is not a good idea.
Snail_Commando 13y ago
Chapters 9 and 10 of this: http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfi... Make a pretty damning indictment of my argument. Although I never really liked the patent system, I believed that it was ultimately "the best system given the alternatives" because I believed that in the absence of patent protection, pharmaceutical output would be reduced from lack of incentive. Historically, this has not been the case. Although the authors do agree that abolishing the system in one fell swoop would be a bad idea because it would be politically untenable, prevent the reformation of certain institutions e.g. The FDA, and adversely affect medical researchers and pharmaceutical companies. They instead propose a phased reformation process which includes but is not limited to reducing the costs of phase II and phase III clinical trials (via NIH support / reformation), deregulating patent enforcement and instead affect private contract machinery, and ultimately phase out patents entirely. My argument largely rested on my assumption that pharmaceutical companies were spending their money in a socially optimal way and that pharmaceutical output would be reduced in the absence of trade protectionism. It seems that empirically, the pharmaceutical industry is not an exception to the "trade protectionism is a bad idea" rule-- like I previously tried to argue. They propose a series of reforms to the patent system (with the eventual goal of phasing it out) that would reduce costs. I over estimated the amount of R&D money that was being properly spent. I did not realize how effective certain parts of the global industry have been in the absence of patents. And I did not account for the fact that the patent system incentivizes copy cat drug design. I look forward to finding out where else I'm wrong about healthcare economics.
- Snail_Commando 13y ago
  For what it's worth, Here is another place where I made a version of my argument (with some other context added): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7498742 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7498742 Here is where I retracted the faulty assumptions I made in that comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7499369 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7499369 My unchecked assumptions led to a flawed argument.

linuxhansl 13y ago

Thanks, and I completely agree with you. It wasn't clear from my post, but patents are obviously important, just not to protect everybody's random ideas. That is why it so important to make the point about the investment. In the pharmaceutical industry (and others) there is upfront cost and that should be encouraged and subsequently protected for some time. I still have some philosophical reservations about patenting facts i.e. "this gene does that"; yet I think that is not avoidable. The "Is society as a whole served" question, to me is the paramount criterion. How to establish that for a particular invention, I do not know.

Snail_Commando 13y ago

Edit: I'm mostly retracting my original comment below, my argument is flawed. See my sibling comment. ---------------------------------------------------------- Here is probably a better version of my argument: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7498742 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7498742 Essentially, pharmaceutical clinical trials yield experimental results (new science), they are expensive (need incentive to take the risk), and any system that prevents execution of, or obfuscates the results of, the clinical trial phase is a threat to science. Maybe there is a better system than the patent system but it's the best system we have right now, given the alternatives. It could certainly be improved, maybe even replaced, but abolishing it wholesale is not a good idea.

Snail_Commando 13y ago

Chapters 9 and 10 of this: http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfi... Make a pretty damning indictment of my argument. Although I never really liked the patent system, I believed that it was ultimately "the best system given the alternatives" because I believed that in the absence of patent protection, pharmaceutical output would be reduced from lack of incentive. Historically, this has not been the case. Although the authors do agree that abolishing the system in one fell swoop would be a bad idea because it would be politically untenable, prevent the reformation of certain institutions e.g. The FDA, and adversely affect medical researchers and pharmaceutical companies. They instead propose a phased reformation process which includes but is not limited to reducing the costs of phase II and phase III clinical trials (via NIH support / reformation), deregulating patent enforcement and instead affect private contract machinery, and ultimately phase out patents entirely. My argument largely rested on my assumption that pharmaceutical companies were spending their money in a socially optimal way and that pharmaceutical output would be reduced in the absence of trade protectionism. It seems that empirically, the pharmaceutical industry is not an exception to the "trade protectionism is a bad idea" rule-- like I previously tried to argue. They propose a series of reforms to the patent system (with the eventual goal of phasing it out) that would reduce costs. I over estimated the amount of R&D money that was being properly spent. I did not realize how effective certain parts of the global industry have been in the absence of patents. And I did not account for the fact that the patent system incentivizes copy cat drug design. I look forward to finding out where else I'm wrong about healthcare economics.

Snail_Commando 13y ago
For what it's worth, Here is another place where I made a version of my argument (with some other context added): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7498742 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7498742 Here is where I retracted the faulty assumptions I made in that comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7499369 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7499369 My unchecked assumptions led to a flawed argument.