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Comment by math | Hacker News Reader

Most of the time, I don't think you do. I think innovation is still going to happen anyway. For example, I think companies would have still made mobile phones and furthermore I think they would be better without patents because one maker wouldn't be arbitrarily restricted from using some idea-that-was-going-to-happen-anyway-because-the-time-was-right because another patented it. What is lost in monopolies is more than made up for in reduced overhead and ability to move quicker and come up with superior solutions because you are allowed to build on more ideas than you otherwise would. In some instances perhaps patents do act to expedite innovation (instances where time/cost to market is very high), but I think these are in the minority and that there is probably a better legal / tax / grant / political solution to that than granting of monopolies on ideas.

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I am a cofounder of a small company that has a patented process for removing oil spills. We are not in the green yet but the only reason we could hold out against the big oil companies in the face of any attempt to take over our technology was the patent. Patents are not the best option, but for truly innovative approaches to problems an inventor has very few options.

The above patent in the OP is egregious, and I can't really support it.

To your point, innovation may happen, but the inventor may not get compensated along the way. Patents try to bridge the gap. They are not perfect, but they do seem to work, in my opinion.

Two points here:

1. I'm more inclined to judge a policy by the net benefits to society rather than specific participants in it.

2. I actually think the patent system favors large enterprise more often than it does small companies. For a number of reasons. One of them being so much is patented you need a large portfolio of covering things your competitors are probably infringing on as a deterrent from them suing you or counter attack if they do. etc. As a small player, you can't do this.

Your example is perhaps one of how the system was envisaged to work - though I'd be interested to know how you go if ever you needed to finance legal proceedings against a big corporate.

What about pharmaceuticals? These are a major arena of patents, where the R&D is measured in the billions of dollars per drug with massive profit margins on successful drugs and tiny profit margins on generics once the patents have expired. What do you think the best alternative is to patents? Government-sponsored research (which already contributes a lot to pharmaceuticals by paying for low level research) or something else?

You were just presented with a case where nothing was invented, a drug was simply looked up in a commonly known ancient text. Colgate owes India damages.

You're right, that's the sort of thing that seems to deserve neither a patent nor any other sort of monopoly. But my question is about the many billions of dollars spent on other sorts of pharmaceutical development. Or is your argument that cases like this one outweigh the benefits derived from drug development in cases where it requires genuine, prolonged, and expensive research effort?

I think corporate drug research is a flawed development model. It have varying amounts of immoral, amoral and antimoral. To have a _monopoly_ on life saving cures doesn't make sense. Esp how we have seen drug patents wielded against countries with no ability to pay otherwise, for markets that were and will not ever be available to those pharmaceuticals.

Drug research should be publicly funded and the results given away to all. Not just because it the right thing to do, but because it is the most efficient.

Yes, I think there would be some system of government sponsorship that would more efficiently deliver the same benefits to society. On the other hand, you can probably rely on governments to screw it up, and it's a tricky issue so I'm open to changing my mind (on extremely high cost to develop patents only).

Government-sponsored research would eliminate the perverse incentives of patent-based research, and the fight against disease is absolutely a concern of the public sector.

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