Here is another example of patent sclerosis: patents used to hinder development of steam engines in the late 1700's: http://mises.org/daily/3280/ . Patents have been a hindrance to technology for over 200 years.
Patents undoubtedly hinder the development of certain technologies. They almost surely incentivize the development of other technologies (e.g. drugs, chemical formulations). It is far from clear to me that the complete abolishment of patents would be a net positive development for society.
No they don't. Chemical agents (e.g. detergents) and drugs are often very cheap to reverse engineer, compared to the cost of developing them originally.
Yup. There are a few fields of innovation where reverse engineering is cheap. The patent system prevents some of that reverse engineering in a rather costly and ineffective manner. (Think China.) It also prevents companies from working on technologies they think might be in development somewhere else (because they'll probably lose the patent), generates huge legal expenses, and completely perverts innovation in a lot of other fields, such as software. Is it worthwhile to bear these immense costs for the sake of a few chemical giants and the doubtful efficiency of their research processes?
Medicine (and the quality of life it brings) is a moral and ethical imperative. Why should we leave something so important to market forces? Why must the development of medicine be incentivized by profit?
If you continue all drug-funding efforts via your insurance company, etc, the way things are done will never change.
If instead we pooled the money we would spend and payed the companies to do the research directly they wouldn't deserve ownership (it being work-for-hire) and society would directly benefit.
Besides, it's not like patents work. Too often a real inventor loses all protection because of a filing error, and too often patents just enable squatting.
If patents weren't absolutely horrible for business and consumers we'd need to figure out a better replacement. But the way it is even just removing them totally would be better for everyone except abusers.
Comments
Here is another example of patent sclerosis: patents used to hinder development of steam engines in the late 1700's: http://mises.org/daily/3280/ . Patents have been a hindrance to technology for over 200 years.
Patents undoubtedly hinder the development of certain technologies. They almost surely incentivize the development of other technologies (e.g. drugs, chemical formulations). It is far from clear to me that the complete abolishment of patents would be a net positive development for society.
Trade secrets go a long way towards covering such cases. Coca Cola is a good example of this working for a very common chemical formulation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola_formula#Physical_secu...
No they don't. Chemical agents (e.g. detergents) and drugs are often very cheap to reverse engineer, compared to the cost of developing them originally.
Yup. There are a few fields of innovation where reverse engineering is cheap. The patent system prevents some of that reverse engineering in a rather costly and ineffective manner. (Think China.) It also prevents companies from working on technologies they think might be in development somewhere else (because they'll probably lose the patent), generates huge legal expenses, and completely perverts innovation in a lot of other fields, such as software. Is it worthwhile to bear these immense costs for the sake of a few chemical giants and the doubtful efficiency of their research processes?
Medicine (and the quality of life it brings) is a moral and ethical imperative. Why should we leave something so important to market forces? Why must the development of medicine be incentivized by profit?
What alternative do you suggest? Markets have their failures, but so do governments, etc.
Because otherwise it doesn't happen to any great extent.
If you continue all drug-funding efforts via your insurance company, etc, the way things are done will never change.
If instead we pooled the money we would spend and payed the companies to do the research directly they wouldn't deserve ownership (it being work-for-hire) and society would directly benefit.
Besides, it's not like patents work. Too often a real inventor loses all protection because of a filing error, and too often patents just enable squatting.
If patents weren't absolutely horrible for business and consumers we'd need to figure out a better replacement. But the way it is even just removing them totally would be better for everyone except abusers.