My opinions on patents are still evolving, but I tend to see drug patents as a good thing that needs reform. I know it's a bit of a tangent, but would someone mind explaining a little?
My main concern is that we can't expect anyone to invest m/billions in necessary drug research if they can be copied the instant the drug shows success. The R&D cost per new drug brought to market is often between 1-12 billion.[1] Even on the low end, that's more than the TOTAL US government's budget for health R&D.[2] Who is going to do this research?
I say the same thing about software and hardware patents, though. What incentive will any company have to innovate if they're constantly getting copied?
IMO too many people let their emotions dictate their thoughts about business -- Company X is big enough, so it doesn't deserve patents. Company Y sues everyone in the sun for using their technology; what a horrible company! For every high-profile case like these, though, there are stories of small businesses and new inventors getting screwed by distributors who outright steal product ideas and resell them for cheaper. We need to make sure that whatever system we have can allow for invention but also not stifle progress of entire industries.
Fine, let's use your example of the small business. Suppose that this company invents a revolutionary technology, such as a cure for cancer or a teleporter. That company is perfectly within its rights to just sit on the technology for 20 years. Even if it does decide to produce the technology, there is no way that it could keep up with demand, so it ends up shipping very small numbers of a very expensive and exclusive product. There really is no situation in which patents make sense.
Do you know why 3D printing is finally taking off? The parents are starting to expire. The technology has been around since the 80's. Try to let that set in how much patents have held back a very important innovation.
> Do you know why 3D printing is finally taking off? The patents are starting to expire.
That same history happened with almost every technology since patents existed. Some quite famous examples are the steam engines, electronic valves, and airplanes. It's an easy to spot pattern, new tech just takes off only a patent length interval after it leaves the labs.
That alone is not evidence that patents are bad. But coupled with the fact that most of those techs were concurrently invented by several people (who often got bankrupt, because they couldn't sell their inventions) it becomes very strong evidence.
I would say the term length is too long, especially for software patents. And non-obviousness is not a precondition anymore, especially for software patents. Otherwise we'd be fine. Instead, nobody can scan-to-email for twenty years.
Empirically, we know that in, say, the 1990's, when hardly any software patents happened, software companies still innovated. Are you trying to suggest that there has been some kind of fundamental economic shift since then that has made innovation impossible in the absence of patents? What is that shift?
What are these stories about small businesses and new inventors getting screwed by people who steal their ideas? It seems to me that you're the one arguing based on emotion -- your post is full of dire warnings without any attempt to back them up.
The one that comes to mind is the FuzziBunz brand of reusable diapers. If you follow Shark Tank, you may have seen the owner on there lamenting about patent infringement -- an employee of hers that was responsible for coordinating the outsourcing of her product to China then abruptly left the company and started her own line of FuzziBunz clones using the same factory.
There are solutions to funding drug research that don't require artificial scarcity. Eg prizes, or simply more government R&D.
The status quo is rediculously inefficient: "...patent-protected brand drugs sell for more than three times the price of generic drugs that sell in a free market. This means that the country could save approximately $140 billion a year on its $220 billion annual bill for prescription drugs if the government did not provide patent protection and drugs were instead sold in a competitive market.
According to the pharmaceutical industry, it spent $41.1 billion on research in the United States in 2004.4 This means that the country spends more than three dollars in higher drug prices for every dollar of drug research supported through the patent system. The rest of the additional spending went to marketing, high CEO pay, and drug company profits."
The R&D issue is indeed real. Even if the state already infuses the industry with $31 billions of tax payers money each year into research, patents add an other form of extra cost onto the product (a form of taxation) that also goes to the producers medicine, which a fraction gets into R&D.
What I hear from people, is the question if this form of state supported industry is really the best way to produce superior speed in research. There are no research to support the claim that state support monopolies is the only choice, a choice with by itself is not even enough so the government has to funnel even more cash to keep things going.
The current system also makes the government assessor to murder, by preventing people in producing medicine that saves lives. Its a sacrifice some for the greater good argument, but for a 2013 society it kind of bad. We really can't figure out a better way except forbidding people to heal themselves? Kind of odd system if one think of it.
There are two main issues with that argument (they don't completely invalidate the argument, but you should be aware of them):
1 - Most of that R&D cost is created because companies must create small differences between their products, requiring new tests. That is, if patents were absent, the society would need to spend a much smaller sum for the same gain.
2 - The pharmaceutical industry isn't an unbiased party of that research (quite obviously) and thus it isn't the ideal party for administrating it.
But, like I said, it does not invalidate the argument. Those issues also don't have an obvious solution (as far as I can see), but they exist.
I think we should be looking at first principles. If we do, then how are software patents different from hardware or drug patents? One difference could be the time and cost necessary to develop them and thus to recoup costs.
If technology is accelerating, why not just shorten patent periods? We could also impose FRAND terms that dwindle over time.
