5 ms·

The idea that patents are not necessary, useful or relevant in today's society is childish. Patents still play a very key role is spurring innovation and allowi

• cscurmudgeon 12y ago
  > The idea that patents are not necessary, useful or relevant in today's society is childish. Also, highly impractical.
  • Alupis 12y ago
    How so? (honestly asking) The entire idea of capitalism is to have fierce competition between companies -- patents, by design, allow one company to innovate once, then nobody else can make something similar. That seems, very anti-competitive (and open for abuse as evidenced by today's "patent wars"). If nobody could "squat" on an idea, then instead of innovating once, you would have to continuously innovate to stay in the lead of your industry.
    • groby_b 12y ago
      That's a rather naive view. If you need to pay billions of research cost for something that can be immediately copied, you simply don't do the research. There's plenty of cheap more or less useless improvements instead. We already see that in medicine, where R&D has become so ludicrously expensive for many actually needed drugs that people would rather create a new ED pill. Capitalism & "free markets" (as if!) fail as a motor of progress, per se. The only thing they're good at is extraction of wealth. That's why we have government regulation in the first place - to direct the efficiencies created by the market place.
      • shiven 12y ago
        I have no clue why you're being downvoted. But what you write is the gospel truth when it comes to drug discovery. Speaking from personal experience here.
        • dnautics 12y ago
          The polio vaccines were not patented. Neither is metformin (for diabetes). Unpatented drugs can be done. (I'm trying fwiw)
      • nickbauman 12y ago
        You mean pharmaceutical, not "medicine". The reason why the costs have gone up is because big pharma has become so bloated and top heavy they can't even fart straight. They no longer even develop new drugs, they buy little, fleet-of-foot companies that do. You know: the ones actually trying to _make_ something: the ones competing. How did they get that way? Because of the patent system.
        • shiven 12y ago
          Manuel Navia[0] would likely disagree. To an extent, at least. The fleet-footed companies you talk about, generate at best, lead compounds. Turning those leads to INDs (investigational new drugs) and then actual "medicine" is totally controlled by the FDA and is a multi-year, multi-million dollar endeavor, that is well beyond the ken of the fleet-footed operators. Many of these drug candidates fail late in the game, after 5-10 years of human trials, sinking the investment of time and effort with them. Meanwhile the patent clock is running and a drug that hits the market has far less than the 20 year patent term to recoup the costs and generate revenue to discover and groom the next life saving drug. [0]http://www.oxbio.com/mnavia.html http://www.oxbio.com/mnavia.html
          • nickbauman 12y ago
            I read some article a while ago explaining that a lot of these costs are inflated by the drug cartels, er, I mean big pharma. And that a lot of regulations are there to create artificial barriers to entry and are promoted by big pharma for this reason. It comes all of one piece: patents encourage lazy encumbancy which encourages regulation, which encourages patents.
• shasta 12y ago
  > The idea that patents are not necessary, useful or relevant in today's society is childish. It's childish to believe that patents are not necessary?
• olefoo 12y ago
  > Patents still play a very key role is spurring innovation and allowing innovative players to profit off of their development and creation of new products. What is your evidence for this statement?
  • Goronmon 12y ago
    I would say that patents seem to mainly be profitable for lawyers and the companies that employ them rather than "innovative players".