Justices Back Mayo Clinic Argument on Patents | Hacker News Reader

Justices Back Mayo Clinic Argument on Patents

nytimes.com

56 pointssew12 comments

Finally.

I'm not even happy, simply relieved. It's taken years and years to begin affirming what should you obvious: you shouldn't be allowed to patent nature. It boggles the mind how it came to this, how we arrived at the notion that someone could patent nature. Software patents are bad enough, whereas patents on biological aspects are much more dangerous. Take gene patents--these patents set biology back years every time someone receives one.

According to the Prometheus spokesperson “Without the availability of patent protection, future health care will suffer as companies may opt out of new research and development.”

This assumption is based on the demonstrably wrong assumption that the ONLY motivating factor driving medical development is predatory rent-seeking of the most odious kind. Were it not for this, the thinking goes, people would all just suffer and die in silence.

People whose lives are seriously impacted by any condition have a serious motivation to pool resources in an effort to find a cure. To date, the transaction costs have been prohibitive, giving the predatory motivation more power. But there's no reason why the Kickstarter model can't be adapted to this problem - especially when researchers are bolstered by fundamental research done at the NIH. An additional source of funding could come from health insurance companies, who back promising projects because it lowers their costs.

We need to demolish the idea that patents are the one and only pathway to medical advance. In some ways, this is more important that going after software patents, since any time patent reform comes up, drug patents get wheeled out as the prime example of "good" patents. They're deployed like a rhetorical third rail, and a useful way to shut down any conversation about patent reform in general.

Exactly. The artificial scarcity imposed by patents is a hack to avoid the tragedy of the commons, but we should be able to do better. I donate to SENS for both altruistic and selfish reasons: if left unchecked aging will severely impact everyone's quality of life, and in particular mine.

"Justice Breyer rejected a proposed middle ground that had been offered by the federal government. It had urged the court to rule that the Prometheus method was eligible to be patented as an initial matter but could then probably be challenged as invalid because it was obvious and insufficiently novel. "

sighs

I guess unless the company was in bankruptcy and the judge ruled you couldn't challenge their patents ala Kodak. Then having granted stupid patents in the first place would not have been such a good idea Mr. Holder.

Why was the federal government/Holder even involved in this in the first place? Is it his job to promote patent and copyright policies?

Well, either the federal government should stand by its existing patent policies, or it should change them. Halfway "we know we shouldn't be doing this but can't you just let it slide and hit it on a technicality instead" measures really should not be an option.

The reasoning behind the ruling might make it a good time to try to appeal a business process patent.

I think the ruling is correct, but someone needs to be doing this research. Dosage research and clinical trials for non-patentable compounds needs to get funded. I hope the federal government fixes this hole.

For instance, the FDA had to use a bullshit process to get clinical research done on colchicine for gout. There is also some research that vitamin D deficiency is causing many unnecessary deaths, but no ongoing clinical trials. The status quo needs to get fixed.

Bullshit process? URL Pharma exploited a loop hole to do 'research' and a clinical trial on a drug that has been known for centuries to work (yes centuries, the plant it is based from has been used since roman times).... Doctors are angry because suddenly the poor patients without insurance could no longer afford medication they need. That research was worthless, proved what was already proven, and exploited a loophole in the FDA grandfathering process to make a company a risk free profit.

The price went from $0.09/pill to $4.85/pill overnight.

Oh, and an easy citation is wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colchicine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colchicine#Marketing_exclusivit...

URL Pharma didn't exploit a thing. The FDA setup the program, and asked drug companies to do the trials. It was the FDA's "Bullshit Process" that caused the problem, not the drug company that did what they were asked.

From the article:

"That year, the FDA started their "Unapproved Drugs Initiative", through which they sought more rigorous testing of efficacy and safety of colchicine and other unapproved drugs on the market.[26] In exchange for paying for the costly testing, the FDA gave URL Pharma three years of market exclusivity for its Colcrys brand,[27] under the Hatch-Waxman Act"

>>but someone needs to be doing this research

It will get done the same way a lot of research that has no immediate monetary value (but still is quite valuable to humanity) gets done. i.e. Astronomy, Anthropology, theoretical physics, etc, etc

Big pharma is just trying to scare you.

It's a shame the NYTimes hasn't figured out how to typeset "E=mc²" correctly, over 100 years after the original paper. (It's right in the court's decision.)

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