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Wipout Essay Results
chrestomanci writes "The Register is reporting on the
results of a counter-essay contest run by wipout.net (an international organisation that seeks to limit the reach of the WIPO and intellectual property rights in general) against the WIPO's own essay contest, both with the title "What does intellectual property mean to you in your daily life?". A telling slogan reads: Today, the WTO pulled the trigger on another 2.500 poor AIDS victims."
I'm not a huge fan of patents, but drug patents are one of the few types of patents that make sense. Why do we need patents? To subsidize the cost of innovation. And the cost of innovation is often steep, it has always been much easier to ripoff someone's idea than develop it yourself. Often times, the inventor doesn't profit at all from his invention. (see Xerox->Apple->Windows)
For pharamceutical companies, the cost to develop drugs is high, not just because of all the trial and error involved (although rational drug design does help), but because of all the FDA-mandated trials involved. The patent system, as far as I know, is the only system that has been developed to offset the costs of getting a drug FDA-approved.
Its not like a software patent, where the costs of innovation are mostly pizza and Jolt. I would like to see a better system for compensating drugs companies for the money they put into getting a drug approved, but I have not seen one. Maybe instead granting drugs patents for a set number of years, we could grant them based on the time it takes to recoup the trial costs? At least then we could minimize the damage done by granting a monopoly on a life-saving substance.
Websurfing: The Next Generation - StumbleUpon
While the cost of development is high the cost of production is really low. Now when you have a bunch of people that wouldnt be able to pay for the drugs anyway why not just give them the drug at lower or no cost. Such cost differentiation is not unheard of. for example some drugs for pets are cheap, while the identical drugs for humans are expensive. Thats because people wouldnt pay the high costs of a drug for a pet.
" Today is World Intellectual Property day... What! Why didn't anyone tell me! I could have been planning a party!"
We wanted to tell you, but you refused to sign the NDA.
Ok hows this: Have you splurged on yourself lately. Maybe bought a new pair of shoes when the old pair would have got you around for a while longer. Or maybe eaten out when you could have eaten at home. You could have sent that money overseas to help buy that medicine. Did you put your own selfish greed and avarice over people - causing deaths and pain?
It is a much more complex issue then you make it out to be and easy to center the problem on evil and heartless corporations.