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Comment by hkt | Hacker News Reader

I've always been confused about the arbitrary lengths of patents. Surely for something like this, six months or a year is fine? Enough time to get to market and make a considerable size of buck, but brief enough that a much needed thing that is subsidised by public money can be used as widely as possible. (Remember, philanthropic funds are often treated favourably for tax, so are, in a way, also public-ish money)

On the other hand, you may have invented a novel type of hammock which is neat but has no social function, so, by all means have a quarter of a century of monopoly on that.

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Actually patents themselves don't have arbitrary length. They are 20 years and then done[1]. That said, there are patents on refinements or add-ons that come later, and so sometimes the patent expires but it has been replaced by a new way that is even better.

There is a scheme in the pharmacy market for shifting patents to prevent generics from being produced, that scheme would be outlawed if we had the right mix of legislators in Congress (basically fewer people who are dependent on these pharmaceutical companies for campaign funds and PAC support). But the original patents do expire, the trick is convince folks that they don't do what they do as well as the new thing does what it does.See here[2] if you want the boring details.

[1] I've got a bit over a dozen patents that arose out of work I've done for others and ended up becoming very familiar with them, even get the occasional expert witness work when trolls need to be disabused.

[2] https://www.upcounsel.com/patents-in-pharmaceuticals

The problem starts with the time between patent award and regulatory approval limiting the commercial exclusivity. This has driven big pharma to patent manufacturing processes instead of the compounds. If I understand it correctly from memory the Ritalin availability crisis was a example of process patent reengineering.

Edit: was not is.

There is a system called supplementary protection certificates (SPCs) that gives an extension you the monopoly period to account for regulatory approval periods.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplementary_protection_certi... (I haven't checked this link).

Drug patents have 20 years from the time of invention, but getting FDA approval takes 10 years after invention so that really only leaves you with a 10 year monopoly.

I think people are under the impression that the government is giving like 75% of the funding for drug development. It’s more like 1%. Getting FDA approval is a very arduous and expensive process. If you want to build an insulin factory, you’re looking at 8-10 years and $100 million to prove to the government that your insulin is safe to use. [1] That’s just for making generic insulin. Developing a new drug from scratch and getting it approved is orders of magnitude harder. A 6 month monopoly wouldn’t be close enough to recoup your costs.

[1]: https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/forefront.20190405....

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