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Patents and Eminent Domain
mrbill writes "Interesting take on the Eminent Domain case now before the Supreme Court. Could the same logic behind using Eminent Domain to take real property be used to take a Patent? Apparently some states are contemplating taking drug company patents to force lower drug prices." From the article: "Patents are the key to huge drug-company profits. The industry will fight vociferously to protect them. In West Virginia, where the issue came up last summer, industry lawyers warned a legislative advisory council away from proposing such action on patents, claiming it would be unconstitutional. "
I don't see how it would be assuming there's due process.
I'd have to say I'm a little skeptical about this, even if the drug companies did lose. Not to be a troll, but I imagine if they did lose in court they'd do what every other industry does when they lose in court; buy legislation.
I'm so bugged with this whole paptent issue. I will tell you why. I was once developing a IM Bot for MSN messenger using perl. I was almost towards the end of coding the bot. Thats when I hear that the IM bot technology is patented by ActiveBuddy. I had to stop development. I wish they had a better model to protect software inventions
fuvoo: watch something
if a government did apply this to drug patents they would be required to pay fair market value for them which would be roughly equal to the rediculous profit the companies are gaining from their sale. This means that any difference in price would be made up in tax money.
If it's property such that the RIAA and MPAA consider it theft rather than copyright infringement, would states or the federal government have the power to pay "fair market value" (whatever that is) and release it to the public?
Not everything would be that way, of course, but if the government has the right to take land to preserve our natural heritage, why not take art to preserve our cultural heritage?
This tagline is copyrighted material. Please send $10 for an affordable replacement.
I don't think it's really eminent domain in that the Fed Government created this "property" right in the first place.
P.S. Be sure to read Against Intellectual Property by Steven Kinsella
Since the drug companies invest so much in research due to the potential profit, wouldn't reducing the potential profit reduce the incentives for research?
because the drug companies wouldnt lower prices. Although I would say that this would easily be overturned/outlawed by the bought and paid for Congress. Although if they were to take patents for drugs, whats to stop them for taking patents for everything else?
Its a shame that the states are doing what the federal govt. should be doing these days.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
The summary above refers to Susette Kelo v. City of New London. The city is attempting to use eminent domain to take some land from people, and sell it to a private developer to develop. (I emphasize private because the case hinges on that) Cnn had a good write up here
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
I seem to recall that when the Radiers first moved down to LA, the city of Oakland actually tried to sieze ownership of the team under Eminent Domain. Don't rember how far they got with that little property-grab...
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I think that Big Money and Big Media has such a strong grip on national politics and national politicians, that going local is the way to bring leftist/progressive solutions to America. Best to just go ahead and let the Republicans and Republicrats kill off the IRS. THat way the states can start their own mini-IRS's and go ahead with universal healthcare, long term unemployment, low cost broadband, and other progressive/leftist quality of life improvement. All local....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Oh No!
Will my constant supply of cheap Viagra come to an end or will someone else just send those poorly written emails now?!
"Patents are the key to huge drug-company profits. The industry will fight vociferously to protect them. In West Virginia, where the issue came up last summer, industry lawyers warned a legislative advisory council away from proposing such action on patents, claiming it would be unconstitutional. "
Sounds like the consequences of blurring the lines between real property and intellectual have come back to haunt them.
In General, Giving out patents is a good thing. The companies get short term profit, but society gets innovation in the long term. When the patent runs out, the tech is free to use. It's cases like rapid mass epidemics where the theory breaks down, because in that case the best thing for society long term is to prevent a disease from wiping out half the population in the short term. Then again, the world has a lot of people....
In West Virginia, where the issue came up last summer, industry lawyers warned a legislative advisory council away from proposing such action on patents, claiming it would be unconstitutional.
With good reason, since the concept of eminent domain is not actually part of the constitution. Not that it will stop political bodies from trying it.
Of course, the "huge profits" that phamaceutical companies get from selling a drug under patent are not all that great. Not after paying for the cost of creating the drug... not to mention a dozon other drugs that don't make it through the FDA approval process.
There is a difference between taking away the right to use your house, and the right to exclude others from using a copy of your house.
Taking away a person's house is fundamentally wrong if you believe in the concept of private property. Taking away a patent is only wrong if you believe that patents are exactly like houses.
To "take away" a patent actually just means, the government won't help enforce it any more. It's not like they can extract the data from the employee's brains. Not the same thing as having the police remove you from your house.
I think calling this "eminent domain" is a big mistake. Call it "patent forfeiture" or something. The company can still make the product and profit from it, they just have to compete on the open market instead of hoping for a government-granted monopoly.
However I would rather the government weaken all forms of patent protection across the board, or just in specific industries. Having the government choose who gets the monopoly protection and who doesn't seems an even worse idea than granting them uniformly to anyone with a valid patent. I can just imagine the conflicts of interest that would arise, and the opportunity for corruption.
Let a private business go through all the work and expense of developing a drug, and then simply procure it because of "public good."
That'll keep drug companies in business developing new drugs. In fact, if I was president of a drug company, I'd make sure I got my products to market faster after this happened the first time. I would just love deals like this. Here, let me bend over for you... do you mind if I lean on my desk?
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
In the mid 1700's, property did not mean land. Property meant legally owned posessions.
In the reading of the Constution, "nor private property taken for public use, without just compensation." Yes, this applies to all property, not just land.
This whole mess is primarily because of the FDA.
It's a fantastic idea. Drug companies make way too much money. Better the states take their patents to more fairly control them. The same goes for most other successful businesses and, indeed, private individuals, too. If the state takes them all over, they'd be able to distribute the assets far more fairly.
It's such a great idea, I can't believe no one's tried it before!
The only concern would be those damn Commie Ruskies trying to undermine our great system.
From the Article:
The councilman argues that if drug companies were smart, they would "start talking about price reductions now rather than leave themselves open to a long, drawn-out due process review and hearings to determine just compensation."
So the states wouldn't want this to go to trial. They'd very likely lose. Isn't this just blackmail? However, if their argument is that falicious, the drug companies may not be persuaded to do anything and simply fight back.
Such review and hearings, he warns, would expose "just how pervasive the price gouging and profiteering has been."
Drug companies take on huge risk when developing drugs and shouldn't their prices be high enough to cover past and future risks? The total cost of a drug has to include the drug company's failures in R&D, which I would presume are higher than other industries. There is also a possibility for future liability when you find that the drug has nasty side effects (cox-3 inhibitors). On the other hand, they probably are a little too greedy. Besides, isn't it fun to get the juicy details of the inner workings of corporate america and keep consciousless big business in check.
You said it man. Nobody f#%ks with the Jesus.
What you leftist, socialist, anti-capitalists don't understand is, without profits, a company doesn't stay in business. If you don't like the price of a drug, don't buy it. Before you start; I tell my Doctor to select an inexpensive drug. He tab's through his PDA, and we descuss the drug he is considering, and it side effects, as well as its price. Once I am satisfied, he writes the prescription. All of my drugs are cheaper if I just pay cash; the insurance co-pay is more than the cost of the drug.
I'm not the pessimist you are. The pressure to lower drug prices are coming from many quarters. And unlike other things in life. Life and death can hinge on this issue. "Bought and paid for" against a pissed off constituentcy. Unlike the credit card commercial. There are some things money can't buy, or buy for long.
Hey, I will be the first one to say that drug prices are insane. I have one prescription that I don't take because it costs too much -- I only take it when I have too. But if a drug company has the fear of immenient domain, what is going to keep a drug company innovating and researching? The idea of patents is to protect the innovator's investment and to encourage innovation. If I were a drug company, I would threaten to close shop. The drug companies may enjoy high profits, but the R&D costs are insane too.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
Are you positive that the companies won't fight victivorously, instead?
Why is Henry Reardon the only one allowed to make Reardon Metal?
This is a serious question.
Why should the government grant a monopoly to company to manufacture a product, whose shortage would be detrimental to its citizens?
However, an action such is this once taken, might heomrrhage the future of the research and development forever.
A fascinating topic of political/economic/scientific importance.
Amendment IX - Construction of Constitution. Ratified 12/15/1791. ,basicaly these companys really need a large gouvernmental slap
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
does the constituation also not state somewhere(im not american and have little experiance with he document) that you are entitled to healthcare . if these patents are restricting those rights (by overpricing or by disalowing advancment in treatment) then
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
because patents have an expiration. if i have property and some government (local, state, etc) wants to take it, i have rights to fight it in court.
most drug patents are close enough to expiration that the company could delay enough in court to make it a moot point.
eric
I don't think we can lay the entire situation at the drug companies feet. The FDA runs anything medical through hoops in order to prevent say another "Thalidomide" baby. Maybe if society was willing to take more risks? We could lower our costs of everything medical.
Somewhere along the way they got too successful.
Personally, I think there are cases where eminent domain should be applied to patents-and cases where the government should offer prizes for creation of patents that will be placed in the public domain. The only real dangers of application of Eminent Domain to patents are
a) the price will be too low so folks have their property expropriated
b) the price is too high-so companies lobby to get
Eminent Domain applied to their patents
Of these, I tend to see 2 as the lessor danger.
If the state can take IP from a large corperation, what would stop the state from taking other things from less wealthy businesses and private folks.
Eminent Domain only refers to land, and even then only for the government to use. Also, the 'victems' are very fairly compensated. And that is fine and well, because somethings need to be well placed. Such as roads, schools, and libraries.
But if the government could take IP, and since big corperations can usually buy laws, what would stop the MS from using government money to take say, the rights to the Linux kernal?
That is simply far too much power for the government to have.
<kinda off topic>
on the whole SCOTUS case, if they can take land and give it to other private citizens, what would happen if some company got a man elected, and then he seized all competition for said company, giving the propery to the company? It would be terrible, but very posible if the supreme court rules for the state.
</knida off topic>
That is just too much power for the government!
If the government can take patents, why not farms? After all, poor people need to eat, and food makes up a significant portion of their budget. If the government owned all the farms, they could give food to poor people for free. Pretty soon, they wouldn't be poor anymore.
I really can't believe this story is being discussed calmly here. The application of "eminent domain" to patents is absolutely ridiculous. It's just state legislatures trying to expand their power and say what they think the voters would like to hear -- though it may be the most egregious example of government theft I've heard of (at this scale, in this country) in a very long time.
I always mod up spelling trolls.
I think that the Wright brother's patents on airplanes were taken away by the US govt in WWI. So this is not unprecedented.
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
it's incredible how has bought in this Intellectul Propriety thing.
Shall I remind that patent are not property of anyone, but just a temporary monopoly granted by the state to inventivate innovation for the public benefit?
So why shouldn't the same states that grant them can and shall change the rules to handle tecnichal innovation if this better fit public interest?
Why not? In NYC, Mayor Bloomberg is using Eminent Domain to sieze property from people in Brooklyn brownstones so he can give it to the giant developer, Ratner, for a private arena/mall. If a Republican billionaire can "liberate" actual real estate for his developer buddies, why can't we do the same with patents, when that property is not actually removed from its owner, and is actually given to the public?
--
make install -not war
"If you don't like the price of a drug, don't buy it."
Good for you when there's a choice available. However drugs are in a different catagory than most things in life. To do without for most things, means inconvience. For drugs it could mean death.
The Law gives, the law takes away" was the court's basic argument.... It will be really funny to find out what happens when the Congress wants to "take away" This could be good or bad, after all, When We want to get copyright back under control we'll have the same basic argument again by the *IAA's...
Hopefully the court will keep tooting it's horn!! This jsut the IP trap we need to get the IP situation under control... then all we have to do is convice lawmakers... their decisions will stick.
I'm too lazy to look this up, but didn't something similar happen with aspirin in the U.S. during the 1940s?
Aspirin is (was) a trademark of Bayer, a German company, who was a big supporter of the the Nazi regime in Germany.
The U.S. Gov't nullified the trademark and patents back in the early 40s, thus allowing other drug companies to call their product "aspirin".
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
The article states that the Supreme Court has said that it is acceptable for states to do this, which is kinda of surprising to me (IAAL). Article I, Sec. 8, Clause 8 of the U.S Constitution specifically states that regulating Patents and Copyrights is a power of the Federal government. Since the Feds are a government of limited power, when the Constitution says its theirs, it is generally theirs.
Even so, eminient domain requires "just compensation" by the state at the time of the taking. With a monopoly on the drug for the duration of the patent, "just compensation" is going to be nothing any rich states can afford, let alone a poor mid-west or southern state. So it seems to me, the states attempting this will spend a lot of tax dollars only to find out they are really not getting any kind of "deal" from the drug companies. Drug companies like Merck, Smith Kline, etc. have as much money, if not more, than the budgets of most states. They can afford to drag this out, even to the point when the patent expires.
The latest congressional proposals to lower drug prices involve allowing people to import drugs from Canada. If the U.S. really wants lower drug prices they should do what Canada does. They should allow competitors to license the patents at a fair price.
What a great idea! Take away the patent rights to any popular new drug that a Rx Manufacturer develops. Then wonder why no one is developing new drugs. Note that the Cipro example cited in the article was used to get Bayer to lower the price; as it turned out, there was no actual need for the general public to take Cipro.
Revise the patent system for new drugs, sure. Trying to take away patents previously granted will just generate a lot of lawyering work.
I could be out of step here, but I've always understood property to mean just that: all the things one owns.
Is this an American/British difference, perhaps?
If your comment title says 'Re: Foo', I'm not likely to read it.
IMax wanted to add a theatre to the Putnam Museum in Davenport, IA. The addition required extending the parking lot exit above the top of the hill where a street of houses were. One man held out and asked for twice the value of his property. IMax wouldnt go for it, and the city tried to pull eminent domain. The man sued the city, and it was decided that the theatre was not a public project, so the city could not take the house. I dont recall what IMax ended up paying for the mans house.
industry lawyers warned a legislative advisory council away from proposing such action on patents, claiming it would be unconstitutional
Courts have already ruled that taking real property (ie, realestate) for state projects, such as road construction for the greater good, is constitutional. However they might rule that allowing ideas to be used for the greater good is not? Stop the planet, I'm getting dizzy.
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
We have local governments so that the Federal Government isn't expected to understand local needs, only nation-wide needs.
So what happens when a local need such as a need for medication to preserve the health of local citizens conflicts with a nationwide need such as the need "[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts"?
The previous Brazilian president's health minister, José Serra (currently mayor of São Paulo), did several really important things when he held that office. He set up a modern organ donation system (cutting down significantly on the black market for organs that existed previously). He pushed for the law making generic medications possible. He created an anti-AIDS policy that is a model studied by governments from all over the world. And part of that AIDS policy involved the government giving medications to AIDS patients.
The success of Brazil's anti-AIDS policy had convinced many that it was well designed and should continue as it had. But as the multinational pharmaceutical companies jacked up the prices of AIDS treatment medications, it got to the point where continuing the otherwise successful policy would be beyond the government's financial limits. Serra went to the pharmaceutical companies (there were two main ones making AIDS treatment meds) and told them that a clause in the Brazilian constitution allowed him, in the case of a crisis (and AIDS would have been accepted by the courts as a crisis), to break the patents and allow Brazilian companies to manufacture the drugs without paying a cent to the patent holders. He made it clear that he did not want to do that, and that he just wanted the companies to stop jacking up the prices. One company agreed immediately. The other decided to call Serra's bluff. He moved forward with the actions he had to take to break the patents, and the other company gave in.
Brazil's successful anti-AIDS policy continues to work, even after a change of governments (Serra lost the presidential election of 2002 to Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, one of the founders of the Brazilian labor movement). I do have some questions about where to draw the line between a crisis and a non-crisis, and I worry about what else the government could just take in the name of averting a "crisis," but this is an example where the end result was pretty positive. The pharmaceutical companies didn't get to do as much price gouging as they had hoped, but since their usual argument is that drugs have to be expensive because of the high cost of developing new drugs, there was little reason to keep elevating the price of drugs that had been on the market for some time. In terms of public health, it was a big win, as Brazil's policy continues to limit the spread of AIDS.
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
Drug prices are out of control, in the United States. However, I'm not sure the concept of Emin. Domain is the right way to go. What we need to do would be to have the Congresscritters set controls on drug prices, but I'm afraid that's not going to happen with their 'sources of income'...
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
When I first saw this in RSS all I saw was "Patents and Eminem" and I was like what the hell is Eminem Bitches about Patents. Man was i wrong.
WillyG
I don't know whether it's true or not, but critics claim that the drug companies spend 10x as much on advertising as they do on research.
There's no need to discuss these things theoretically, when all publicly traded companies have to make SEC filings of their financial statements.
According to Pfizer's most recent 10-Q filing, for instance, they incurred "selling, informational, and administrative expenses" of $4,036 million (or 31.5% of revenues), and "research and development expenses" of $1,888 million (or 14.7% of revenues). The former category includes much more than advertising (administrative expenses include accounting, payroll, facilities maintenance, etc.) Nevertheless, total administrative and marketing expenses were only about twice as much as R&D costs.
People like to talk about the rapacious profits of drug companies. Well, go and look at the numbers for yourself: Pfizer's earnings per share are $1.19; Eli Lilly's are $1.66; Merck's are $2.90. By way of comparison, American Electric Power is $1.51, Wal-Mart is $2.41, Staples is $1.40, Home Depot is $2.26, Anheuser-Busch is $2.77.
Drug companies are not massively more profitable than everything else. People who think that they are should simply invest in them and benefit from the price-gouging which they are supposedly inflicting upon the public.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
Yeah,
Like the US Federal telling a Foreign drug firm about a dollar. That is precedent enough to pay 1/6. What about flu shots, smalpox, the sand is being kicked.
Anyway, the states would be better off bulk importing, or spending the money to invalidate extended patents that were dubiously extended.
Greece and Australia have excellent open market drug policies that benefit their citizens.
Opening the market to allow Canadian drugs would be a start.
Eminent Domain only refers to land
Then why have patenting practices, especially in IT, been metaphorically compared to a land-grab?
Way long ago, when today's biggest, most-gigantorrific companies were scrappy litte upstarts, they all moved their operations to Switzerland. Why? Switzerland did not grant and did not recognize patents! So these little companies could live in poor, backwards Switzerland and happily "pirate" the patents of other people. One of these companies, Ciba, got its start by ripping of an English patent on aniline dye. Ciba eventually grew up to be one of the planets biggest companies, Syngenta. Syngenta successfully lobbied the European Convention to allow patents on genes, and also went to court to stop South Africa from treating AIDS patients with its patented drugs.
The moral of this story appears to be, the more you rip off other people's "IP", the better chance you stand of become a multigazillionaire. I'm all for it, then.
With good reason, since the concept of eminent domain is not actually part of the constitution. Not that it will stop political bodies from trying it.
The concept of breathing is part of the Constitution either, and that will not stop anybody from doing it.
In any case, patents are only property to th degree that Congress makes them that way. We, the people, can limit them any time we like.
Could the same logic behind using Eminent Domain
to take real property be used to take a Patent?
This happenen in France in the 1800's, with the Jacquard loom.
Joseph-Marie Jacquard began his invention, and was interrupted by the French Revolution, and then afterwards completed his invention in 1801. He presented his invention in Paris in 1804, and was awarded a medal and patent for his design, however the French government claimed the loom to then be public property, giving Jacquard a slight royalty and a small pension.
Source: Idea Finder
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Government 'taking' of IP is nothing new, what's new is the 'venue'.
In the past, seizure and supression of IP has usually been in the name of "National Security".
An example that jumps to mind is the LASER... which was 'taken' from its inventor and remained a closely guarded secret of the government for 15-odd years.
One element of drug prices that really needs some scrutiny is how much your PUBLIC money is used to fund research via the various universities... who then sell the IP to private companies... which turn around and charge you big money for the drug whos development you paid for in the first place.
(This also applies to lots of other technologies developed with public money)
As someone mentioned, Big Pharm spends much more on advertising than they do research. Regardless, their profits are the biggest of any industry. They average 14% returns on revenue, while the average Fortune 500 averages 7%. Reducing profits will only reduce the incentive to research if researching would make them unprofitable, and this would not be the case.
Furthermore, anecdotal evidence has actually suggested that whenever the government has passed legislation making it harder on Big Pharm, research spending has gone up. The Hatch-Waxman Act of 1984 increased the availability of generics (something Big Pharm lobbied intensely against on the grounds that research spending would decrease), and what happened? Over the next five years, research doubled. The same thing happened after 1990, when a law was passed allowing Medicaid to bargain with drug companies.
Drug patents expire in 20 years. 20 years from now you will be able to buy all the expensive drugs of today in generic versions for almost nothing. No need to invade drug companies with guns and steal their IP, just wait it out. Until then you can party like it's 1985.
Is the upcoming large number of elderly Baby Boomers coupled with the large number of Greatest Generation folks who JUST WON'T DIE a crisis?
return;
So many of them just bought or built their third $500,000+ house in [insert impossibly expensive urban center or suburb].
return;
I just joined an American firm , as part of my job I have to solicit offers from Companies. I was doing the same back in my Country without this IP curse. Any company I call has a pet statement - " This is an IP and we can not disclose further" or " We are using a patented technique I can't disclose much". I am wondering was the country that I left back starving or the economy going down because it is not using the IP excuse. Evidently not, my country is seeing a growth of 10% of GDP every year. Then I guess this whole approach of IP and Freedom of Speech don't go together. Its funny when America sends Doctors to foreign nations to cure patients. Back in their own country all they care is make big bucks. I was amazed at plane loads that tsunami victims got , while many needy here in USA because of lack of insurance can't afford the same. Between being a PERFECT DRIVER, NEVER GETTING SICK sometimes its so overwhelming.
Something similar just happened in St. Louis. The case is called Aaron v. Target Corp. Basically, what happened is that Target had been leasing this piece of land in South St. Louis from some out-of-town investors since the 70's, and wanted to build a new store over the old one. The owners wanted higher rent for it, something Target wouldn't allow. So, what did they do? They went to the city of St. Louis, and threatened to pull their tax dollars from the city unless they did something about it. The city subsequently declared that the property was "blighted," took it via eminent domain, and tried to sell it off to Target. By the time the owners (Aaron) found out about it, it was pretty much done. They sued St. Louis and Target to prevent it, but the federal court ruled in the favor of Target.
Patents are under the designation for intellectual property, which is not the same thing as real property. The Fifth Amendment's taking clause (requiring compensation for the taking of real property) does not apply to patents. Note, patents are promulgated by Congress under Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8 of the Constitution.
As much as the RIAA would like you to think that intellectual property rights (like copyright) are absolute property rights, they aren't. See Prof. Mark Lemley's paper [ssrn.com] on this topic.
Does anybody really believe that this could fly, given a Republican controlled house, senate, executive and judiciary?
Score:-1, Offtopic Somebody didn't get your joke dude! :-)
Slashdot: a place for people who think they're clever...
Unlike physical property, patents are artificial monopolies created by the government. Taking away somebody's house and land is much worse than dismantling a government-granted monopoly.
If eminent domain is going to continue to be part of the legal landscape, patents should be among the first things subject to be taken away for the public good.
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There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
I'm against treating ideas as property, but if the IP industry wants it that way then they should have to live with the unintended consequences, just as we are already living with unintended consequences of the DMCA. Ideas can't be treated like property only in the ways that are to the advantage of the rights holders, oops, I guess it's "owners" now. It doesn't work that way with real property.
In point of fact, the entertainment industry has already applauded government seizure of intellectual property on a grand scale. In 1998 when Congress extended copyright terms for another umpteen years, they took property away from the general public, who had already done their part by paying the cost of copyright enforcement for years and years, expecting to "own" these properties after a specific period of time. Congress suddenly decided that wasn't going to happen.
How would you feel if you made payments on a 30-year mortgage for 29 years, and then Congress suddenly redefined all 30-year mortages as 80-year mortgages, to allow the mortgage companies to continue making more money? That's essentially what happened when copyrights were extended. So I say to the IP crowd, you made your bed (actually, you paid a few Congressmen to make it for you), now you can lie in it.
One more thing. There is a very long history of legal precedent for holding property owners liable for damages directly caused by their property. Waivers and disclaimers carry little weight when the property owner can be shown to have been negligent. I hope the owners of shoddy software and other intangibles are ready to take on a real-world load of responsibility for the real-world damages caused by their virtual property.
Yup. Always remember that government is a necessary evil. As such, it should be kept as small as possible - no larger than is absolutely necessary to do the job. Oh, and it likes to define more and more things as "government responsibility" so that it can grow. Beware of that, too. They key to personal liberty is personal responsibility. Jealously guard both.
Constitutionally Correct
The whole concept of eminent domain, especially when it pertains to land, stems from the idea that all the land first belongs to the king. "All your base are belong to us" was exactly what the king meant by eminent domain.
What kind of idea is this in a free county, a country where -- in theory -- government derives its sovereignty from the people and whose sole purpose and justification is to serve the people?
The idea that the government can seize property in the name of some "public good" is antithetical to a free society: it's a collectivist notion appropriate to socialism.
The whole notion of a "fair market value" as it is currently interpreted is perverse. The only "fair" value on the market is what the property owner would take in exchange for his or her property. For instance, if you live in a house currently valued at $500,000, but it's a house that's been passed on in your family for three generations, or if it's a house you designed as your dream house, or if you built it yourself by hand, you may not wish to sell at any price. No private individual or group of private individuals could ever legally force you accept a price. Why should "all" the individuals ("the people") be able to force you?
It would be a better society if we would do away with eminent domain. It belongs in the dust bin of history along with divine right and all other antiquated political notions from mankind's infancy.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
In this case, we are not talking about a school or a road. In this case the locality is arguing that the "public good" comes solely from the increased tax base that the condemnation would provide. You end up with neighbors being forced off land to be given to a PRIVATE, PROFIT-MAKING developer. You get these arbitrary groups that can pull figures out of their ass, and use these numbers as sole justification for getting rid of the current landowners. In the amicus brief, filed by the libertarian institute for justice, in addition to the NAACP and other groups you might expect to have joined against this was the National Association of Home Builders, who can see that giving land to the highest bidder will skew away from homes and to businesses and buildings that will generate higher tax bases, which homes won't.
This kind of eminent domain is NOT a public good, but is merely as case of whoever pays the most tribute to rome gets to have the land. And there will always be someone who can pay more than you.
Why is the plan to *buy* a solution? Maybe we could reform the patent system rather then paying off the companies.
Thanks for putting on the feedbag. Thanks for going all out. Thanks for showing me your Swiss Army knife.
1. Whatever price the government might pay, it would come from tax dollars, which would generate tremendous political opposition.
2. Who would make the drugs after the government bought the companies? The companies would very probably fold because their stock value would plummet, leaving the government on the hook to run nationalized drug companies at taxpayer expense.
3. It is doubtful that the government, and a lot of Americans, would consider the stuff the MPAA and RIAA are pedaling as "art" that merits saving.
4. Price controls on drugs might be a more effective measure, but would be a hard political sell. (Although Nixon did it.)
5. Since Bush has already racked up a trillion dollars in unfunded spending, maybe we should just follow the trend, write a big check, and the grandkids worry about it.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
The large drug companies are perpetuating a culture of information hoarding. It is, after all, good for business. The losers, however, are the little guys who actually suffer from scary and debilitating diseases, and who find themselves at the mercy of the patent system.
I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis during my sophomore year in college. That basically means that my immune system is prone to attack my brain and my spinal column. The only effective treatment on the market at the moment is Interferon beta, which tends to keep the lymphocytes away from the myelin coating of the axons. While in college, I had to pay $800 a month in insurance premiums, just so that I could keep a decent insurance that would both cover an MS specialist and cover the drug, which costs $1,200 a month! And most people aren't so fortunate as to even have that option. Many have to pay the full $1,200 a month out of pocket just to try to keep their brain and spinal column from being eaten, and they cannot afford to see a specialist.
Biogen held the patents on this treatment and marketed Avonex, until the patent expired just last year. And that same year, lo and behold, they started to market Tysabri, which is better than Avonex in its efficacy (and, of course, thoroughly patented).
So is it mere coincidence that, from the early 90's to 2004, there was virtually no progress in the effectiveness of MS therapies, and then just as the patent expires, all of the sudden we have more effective treatments? Do you think that maybe Biogen has just been sitting on the obscene profits from Avonex until it had no choice but to innovate? And when the innovation is just incrementally better than the prior treatment, one has to wonder what kind of games are being played. Is Biogen going to sit on the Tysabri patents until they expire, keep filing patents on treatments so that other drug companies can't make them, and then release another incrementally better drug 10 years from now?
This just needs to stop. I have no doubt that if drug patents were entirely eliminated and if academics were to fully embrace open collaboration in the development of new treatments for Multiple Sclerosis, my condition would be cured by the end of the decade. Instead, I may have to wait 30 or more years before I see a cure, as the drug companies aggressively lock down the research and the technology that can save people like me from becoming disabled. We have to play this silly protectionist game where the drug companies lobby for stronger drug patent protection, we have a culture of information hoarding, drug prices are through the roof, and those of us who suffer with scary medical conditions bear the brunt of the damage.
For comparison, we would need to know what the return on invested capital is.
This, too, is easily available. Return on equity is a good measure of whether investors in drug companies are enjoying disproportionate returns. For Pfizer, RoE is 13.46%; for Eli Lilly 17.06%; for Merck 38.46%. For Home Depot, RoE is 21.71%; for Wal-Mart 22.99%; for Staples 18.45%; for Anheuser-Busch 82.26%. The conclusion is the same.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
I know all this seems scary however, in Brittain where you can't remove a prive house or even hedge they have terrible infrastructure, curving roads and train tracks, bridges that could be removed with a culvert.
No one wants to think of their home as the property of the government but there are significant advantages to having it that way.
Cuba has more international medical patents (per capita) than the US. And they have more research in more interesting areas than hair replacement therapy. Cuba could very well turn into a biotech powerhouse.
You might want to do some research before spouting off. The issues with medicine are insanely complex. A one-size-fits-all approach (capitalism) to everything is the mark of a stunted intellect. Do you really want ideas like planned obsolescence, market created scarcity, and the Gillette razorblade model applied to healthcare services? Think real hard about that.
Most drug R&D is double dipped, as a good portion of drug R&D is done at the university level (supported through taxes). You get to pay each way. Sounds very remote from a capitalist system.
Beyond that, the government assuming control of private property, regardless of good intentions, sounds suspiciously like authoritarianism with a smiley face. If the government can seize property at will, why bother having property in the first place? Just as well to flee.
There has been more medical advancements in the last 15 years than there has been in the previous 50. That rate is only likely to increase. To wait 20 years for treatment might as well be living in the dark ages in some instances. You sure you want to do that?
qsl
Yep, I just love it when corporations are screwed by the very Imperial mechanisms they use to enslave the People. States in particular are being squeezed so fiscally hard that they are starting to actually get tough with the corporations. The rightwingnuts will predictably scream how this is anti-American, unproductive, Socialism and other such Limbaugh/Hannity nonsense. But that doesn't matter. What's good for the goose is good for the gander ... until we get the rightwingnuts reverting to a desperate honesty and start screaming that the People have few rights while the corporations and wealthy have many rights. Then it's shootin' time ... time to start the civil war, folks.
Like your NYC example, I've watched my fucking state (Ohio) slam people out of their properties due to the bullshit "economic development" clause of modern eminent domain theory. Well, the same logic can be applied to patents. We The People can just take them away from their owners (with "just compensation", how do ya like that sum, assholes?) and place them to something that approximates public benefit.
If Americans had kept their corporations under populist controls all this time, this kind of step would not be necessary. But here we are, in the age of corporate dominance. But vox populi is still out there -- and it's going to be a lot louder than anyone ever remembered it being. \/\/00t!1!11!
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
Taking patents away from drug companies is a bad idea. It would have a chilling effect on research and development. Why develop a new wonder drug drug if you fear it will be taken by the government?
I think a better way is to require the companies to license the patent to competitors for a reasonable fee. This insures they profit from their R&D and it creates compeition in the marketplace.
As I understand it, this was the original intention of patents, to make technology widely available while protecting the investment made by the developer. I don't think it was meant to provide rapacious profits to drug companies by giving them a patent on the key to life or death for some patients.
-All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
www.ra
That's simplistic to the point of being retarded. If it's a life saving drug what happens to your mindless little Republican dogma then? The issue is many people, older people in particular, feel like they're being held hostage by drug costs. And their very reasonable question is how can the drug companies sell these drugs overseas at much lower prices and still make a profit?
The answer is because many foreign governments would not hesitiate to bust a drug company patent and make the drug themselves if the drug companies tried putting the screws to their people like we get it here. So they live with less money from overseas sales.
The American public is getting raped on drug prices. Protectionist behavior from an "open market" administration because a big chunk of of those business expenses are the dollars going right into the pockets your elected officials.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Very good point - there are certain advantages to letting the government be able to take private propety - I like driving on striaght roads, riding on straight railways, straight bridges, 'etc. So here's the $64,000 question - how do you give the government the power to claim private property to promote the "greater good", without certain 'moneyed interests' exerting undue influence on the government to exercise that power.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Wouldn't claiming drug-company patents be like killing the goose that laid the golden egg? I mean, drug companies use the money they make from drug sales to develop new drugs. Moreover, investors would be unwilling to invest in the development of new products, knowing that the government could just take the patent and make their investment worthless.
Let me put it this way. If you have a problem with drug companies making money from their research, how would you feel if those drugs were never developed in the first place? How much drug research would go on if if companies couldn't even make back what they invested? All the drug companies doing R&D would go out of business, and we'd be left with just the drugs we have now.
Sure, they'd cost less in the short term, but in the end it's better to have continued development.
Eminent domain was originally intended for things like schools, police & fire stations, roads, etc. Cities have stretched the meaning of common good to include how much tax revenue they can get from you. If New London wins this case, your house will no longer be yours. A developer might see your house and think a strip mall would look great there. He goes to the city council and says that they should take it from you and give it to him since they will get more tax revenue. The city forcibly evicts you and pays you a fraction of the home value and gives it to the developer. This is a very important case that will have profound effects on the future of our country.
No one wants to think of their home as the property of the government but there are significant advantages to having it that way.
But the advantages go solely to the government and its sycophants. I don't mind crooked roads nearly as much as I mind meddling city councilmen setting themselves up as petty dictators.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
"The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property."
Karl Marx
"Just as man can't exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one's rights into reality, to think, to work and keep the results, which means: the right of property."
Ayn Rand
"America's abundance was not created by public sacrifices to "the common good", but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes."
Ayn Rand
The Supreme Court will probably come down on the side of local governments and developers, but they are 100% wrong. I'm all in favor of using eminent domain for projects that are truly for the public good, but letting local governments take property simply to sell to somebody who will pay higher taxes is NOT what eminent domain was ever intended to do.
Pay attention, people. While you're all whining about the Patriot Act, the feds are about to take away one of you most fundamental rights - the right to own private property.
This is most important. They want to be able to take your property for "fair market value" and let somebody build a fucking Wal-Mart.
As for states taking drug patents. Go ahead. It will be the end of any new research into new drugs. I know that there's no way I'd invest my money in a project if the government can step in and STEAL the results.
Bottom line is - are you a capitalist or a communist?
They already live where they want, and definitely don't keep a permanent mailing address in a high-rent state. They already move their capital and investments wherever necessary to minimize effect, which doesn't help their local economy.
Then it's shootin' time ... time to start the civil war, folks.
Except that you leftwingnuts have confiscated all the guns.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
The answer is because many foreign governments would not hesitiate to bust a drug company patent and make the drug themselves if the drug companies tried putting the screws to their people like we get it here.
And there are many foreign governments who would not mind just letting old (and young) people starve to death, while taking some of them off with the firing squads (or maybe a good doze of one of those chemical WMDs). And the last thing on their minds would be "drug patents"... Please qualify "foreign governments", OK?
There is a good reason US is a relatively stable and prosperous country, and it is exactly the fact that, while not impossible, it is hard for the government to go after somone "just" for the "public good".
As someone else pointed out in the thread, those patents expire in 20 years, thus you can live a relatively comfortable lifestyle of '85.
Paul B.
If that patent is ridiculous to start with, that's one thing. However, most drugs take an inordinantly large amount of money to research and meet FDA approval. Patent protection is appropriate (maybe not 15 years' worth, but some).
One of the many problems, and one that I'm most concerned about, is that many countries have price controls on their prescription drugs that limit the company's ability to turn a profit, let alone funnel profits back into R&D. Countries without price controls, then, have to pay higher prices to foot the bill. This problem should be addressed before using as drastic a measure as taking away patents through a gross misapplication of eminent domain.
In the UK there exists such a thing called a Compulsory Purchase Order - which the Courts can slap on ANYTHING they want, and the person asking for it can purchase at the price the courts put on the order. The 'seller' has the right of appeal, but cannot turn down the offer.
When it comes to corporations nothing is unconstitional, they are not protected by the constition.
The government can take a corporation and silence it, remove its weapons, inflict strange and unfair punishments, search and seize there items and more, all without asking anyone.
Because a corporation is not a citizen.
Or they shouldn't be.
As an avowed gun owner and SecondAmendmentarian, I strongly doubt THAT, Cupcake.
... yeah, the left and right winger-dingers don't know what to do with us expect marginalize and ignore us. Funny how their economic policies still come around and bite their Fascist structures somewhere, eh? Blowback ... I LOVE IT!
Fiscally conservative, socially liberal
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
but the promise of profitability also provides incentive for them to put funds into R&D and clinical trials of new drugs. These are expensive undertakings which that have made or broken many a pharmaceutical company. Unlike many of the dodgy software and business methods patents that the USPTO issues, these are unique, new products that address real problems.
Drugs cost hundreds of millions of dollars to develop. If the government gets in the habit of stealing the patent rights, then why should investors pony up the $$$ to develop new drugs?
Under section 261 of the patent statute 35 USC: "patents shall have the attributes of personal property" Patents are taxable, and they allow the owner the "right to exclude". The state may therefore, take such patents provided that the owner receives just compensation AND that the patent will be subject to public use, just as if it had seized your land.
A case from 1934 in City of Milwaukee v. Activated Sluge Inc. demonstrates this. A patented invention for treating sewege was infringed upon by the city of Milwaukee. The US court of appeals, however, refused to grant an injunction against future infringement because of its desire to protect the health of the community. Although it wasn't exactly a good ruling, if the patentee were to completely withhold from the city the right to use that process (he wished for more royalty in this case), the state could use the power of eminent domain to allow the city to continue using the patent.
This is a great idea, and needs to be done. The public good is a reason to take real property.
I hope this can be done, and is done when ever a greedy company holds up life and health over profits.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=140741&thr eshold=0&commentsort=0&tid=155&tid=123&mode=thread &cid=11791142
I posted this just now, but yes, patents ARE considered to be equivalent to property, and therefore subject to eminent domain.
It helps to actually know the patent law.
For detailed analysis of the morality of patents in the worst case, and a moral justification for ad hoc patent revocation, see Totally Evil Patent.
Could the government take your art collection because it would generate revenue for them by putting it in a local museum?
This would be MORE expensive for the government to do. They would have to pay a "fair" value upfront for the 20 years use of the patent...The thing the States should do is negociate lower prices. The only reason prices are high is because people like me and the government's of the world pay those prices. Plain and simple. By the way the State isn't always a good user of the people's money. I talked with a group of guys at a Stanford alum party who are investing in CA stem cell projects. They laughed that they could "rip off " the tax payer since the State government is putting a few billion into the pot. There is no incentive to use the money wisely. One guy even had the balls to say there was nothing like the government paying for his Aston Martin and home...They all laughed.
I live near New London and this case is receiving a lot of attention on the TV and Radio. The city of New London is trying to take the land and turn it over to a private developer so the city can increase it's tax revenues. That is exactly the arguement the city's lawyer made to the US Supreme court.
To us this is very scary. New London is in Connecticut which is one of the original 13 colonies that rebelled against England. This seems to me to be a revolutionary war type of cause.
The concept of private property is very dear to us and this seems to smack of unjust confiscation. If this case is allowed to stand who of us will be safe? All of our houses and land would draw more in taxes if developed. These people have been on this land a long long time. The coast of New England is pretty damm well populated, they will not be able to replace what they have now.
Just compensation is a tricky term, the state decides and they have NO reason to make it fair or just. If you do not like that figure then you can always sue, sue the state that is. The cost of a suit with lawyers quickly convince most people to take the second offer made by the state. Not a fair fight.
The state politicians have been very quiet on this issue and the papers mute. Two hundred years ago this would have been pitchforks and torches.
Oh, where is a muckracking politico when you need one?
If I'm not mistaken, Current 11th ammendment jurisprudence allows states to ignore federal patent laws, and be immune from suits.
Whoa, I've heard about the ulcer cure, but there's a fungicide that gets rid of dandruff? Not to push any products, but what does one search for? All I could find was Synergine fungicide and Nizoral (scroll down).
The Economist has a nice article on this in last week's issue. Apparently the courts have allowed cities to declare property as "decrepit" just because it's not pulling in enough tax revenue. Here's the article
No one is pointing out the obvious fact that if the US government decides they can just take a patent from a drug company whenever they feel like it, drug companies won't bother spending the R&D money to develop drugs that are likely candidates.
Why spend the billions and billions of dollars to develop an AIDS vaccine if it will most certainly be taken from you the moment you do?
Who benefits from that?
I know that it's a suprise to the slashdot crowd here, but the drug industry isn't a big charity. It costs a *massive* amount of money to develop and test a drug, much of that caused by FDA regulation, good or bad and no company is going to put time, effort and resources behind a product that they can not pay for the R&D cost nor make a profit on.
For the sake of argument, why shouldn't the government be allowed to take the Windows source code from Microsoft and release it as OSS for the public good? Imagine the benefit to humanity!
Well you could start your own little country then... course they have the right to declare war on you.
Assuming you have rights and priviledges is a silly thing to do, especially when arguing with the power that protects them...
Funny that at a time when the rest of the world is actively privatizing various parts of their formerly-public economy in recognition of the fall of "communism" (actually socialism in practice, but communism in ideal) -- such as in Britain, where various automakers, such as Jaguar, were state-owned -- here in the U.S., we would consider stealing private property from people and redistributing the benefits of that property to all, i.e., we would move in the *reverse* direction from the rest of the world.
But then, we do that with religion too (in an attempt to promote "faith-based initiatives" and such). Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised.
Eminent Domain is the worst legal doctrine in the world, and it is routinely used by small cities to bulldoze private property for the benefit of large corporations for the sales tax revenue the city gains from doing so. Wal-Mart is a classic example of this.
And now the socialist hippies of America want to use Eminent Domain to steal patents from drug makers? Who the hell is going to develop new drugs then?
Some people seriously need to go fucking read Atlas Shrugged. Then take at least 2 courses in economics, and then read some about economic history, because nobody who understands economics, even economists on the left, promote such idiotic ideas.
Solidarity comrade, solidarity.
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
The industry will fight vociferously to protect them.
If only the citizenry of the US would fight as hard for our REAL property rights! Over the last several years, eminent domain has been used by many municipalities to force people off of the property they OWN so that developers like Wal-Mart can build stores. Some examples:
Alameda Square in Denver Colorado: The City of Denver is considering condemning the shopping center so that Wal-Mart can build a super center. story
Alabaster, Alabama: Colonial Properties Trust wants to build a shopping center anchored by a Wal-Mart in the town of 24,000. The local government is all for it because they're "not receiving enough in tax revenue to support the town." Trouble is, there are a few property owners that don't want to sell. Answer, local government is resorting to eminent domain. They're citing the increase in tax revenue as the "public good" that justifies condemnation of the property. story
Ardmore, Pennsylvania. A local government plan to "revitalize" the town of Ardmore has officials seeking to use eminent domain to oust property owners and demolish several historic buildings. story
New London, Conneticut. (This is the Supreme Court case that's being heard and was referenced in the posted article). The town is attempting to use eminent domain to forcibly evict seven property owners and sieze their property so that a private company can develop more tax-profitable properties on the land. story
Lakewood, Ohio. Scenic Park, a middle class neighborhood, was seized under eminent domain. The homes were deemed "blighted" because they didn't conform to certain criteria. They didn't have three bedrooms, two baths, an attached garage or central air. Incidentally, the mayor's house, in another neighborhood, doesn't fit these criteria, either. The homes were razed in order to put in a mall and high-end condos. story
Ogden, Utah. The Mayor and City Council want to demolish 34 homes and 6 businesses in order to erect a Wal-Mart (there's that Wal-Mart again) Super Center.
Clemson, SC (right up I-26 from me). Pickens County Council voted to invoke eminent domain to condemn a tract of land zoned residential for the purpose of building a Wal-Mart. story
Between the years 1998-2002, TEN THOUSAND properties were seized via eminent domain in order for the municipalities to sell to private developers!!! The right to own land and property is directly tied to all our other rights. Now, I'm not a big, Anti-Corporation type of guy as I recognize that corporations are not vast, faceless entities, but are made up of individuals that work, eat, sleep, and all that. I have BECOME extremely anti-Wal-Mart, though, in part due to this eminent domain thing and also because of their recent trouble with the labor laws. I don't begrudge Wal-Mart's right to exist, but they've demonstrated time and time again that they are willing to tight rope the law and even break it if necessary in order to continue growing. They're like a virus that must be stopped. I'm on a personal boycott of Wal-Mart. If something isn't done about governments seizing property rightfully owned by law-abiding individuals, a huge pillar of our democratic republic is going to be severely compromised. This is no joke, people. This poses one of the most severe threats to our country.
If you want to keep abreast of the situation, here are a couple of good links. And I especially want to thank Neal Boortz (national talk radio guy, Libertarian). Were it not for him, FAR fewer pe
Is determined by an "appraiser" that works under contract for the "lead agency" and is reviewed by the lead agency. The deposit is made with the courts and the bulldozers and timberjacks move in. The lead agency then proceeds to have their way with the property, and it is all your problem. After years of wrangling, they double the "just compensation" and tell you to take them to court; they pitch how "greedy" you are to the jury and how this is all about "greed" and "saving the taxpayer money". They omit that the "just compensation" will not buy even HALF of what they took. This is the REALITY of eminent domain and "just compensation". "Comparable replacement property" is also a joke. "Your house is typical for that neighborhood, so we are moving you into a typical townhome in a neighborhood of townhomes. It doesn't matter that you are not in a townhome, the monetary value of the townhome is greater and it is "typical" for your new neighborhood."
Its a total crock of bullshit. The castle coalition is NOT spewing propaganda. The greater public good has been stretched so far it isn't funny. If you have ANY doubts what happens when you give a governmental agency power, and let it expand the power, look at the FCC. I'm sure you guys are smart enough to come up with some other good examples. Oh yeah, don't forget that the employees are "just doing their job" and "its not personal". Don't forget that when they go to court, they WILL pull out the "saving the taxpayer money" wookie as a way to distract the jury, and it DOES work. What juror wants to raise taxes? The result is that "everyone" "benefits" from the "improvements" constructed by the lead agency, and it "saves the taxpayers money" (we'll ignore the little fact that the persons losing property to this process get the shaft, to the tune of getting paid $0.20 on the dollar for replacement value if they are LUCKY. I wouldn't be suprised to find out that minority communities (ie ethnic, elderly, etc) that were not very well able to withstand intense pressure were being targetted in "normal" proceedings. If we cut to the core of their arguments, we shouldn't mirandize suspects and should bet them into confession because it saves taxpayer money. Before anyone laughs, bear in mind that the laws governing "eminent domain" ("The Uniform Relocation Act" (24CFR iirc)) cite and include by reference "The Fair Housing Act" which is also known as title XIII of "The Civil Rights Act"... Is violating someone's civil rights to "foster economic development" any less heinous than doing it to "catch a criminal" when the motivation is "saving the taxpayer money" and "expediency"?
Just think about that before you consider voting to expand any of these powers. If you have any questions, go find people in your area that have been personally affected by projects, and go get their opinions. You might be surprised to find that many of them would compare the process to the king forcing you off your farm.. When they have the cops tell you to leave or they will arrest you, is there any difference?
Just compensation is a tricky term, the state decides and they have NO reason to make it fair or just. If you do not like that figure then you can always sue, sue the state that is. The cost of a suit with lawyers quickly convince most people to take the second offer made by the state. Not a fair fight.
That seems odd. I know that in some jurisdictions at least, the way fees in eminent domain cases are handled is that the attorney can work on contingency, taking a percentage of whatever amount he can get for the client, less the amount originally offered by the state.
So for example, if the state offers you $100,000, and he gets an award in court of $1 million, then he could get as much as $300,000, and you get $700,000.
Does CT not allow for contingencies in these cases?
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Patents and other intellectual property are forms of "personal" property (even though they may be owned by entities other than persons). Land, homes, buildings, etc, are called "real" property and only real property can be taken by eminent domain process. At least that's the way it works here in Texas.
Say the state offers you 1.7Mil$ for your waterfront property. You feel it's worth 2Mil$ because the Smiths down the beach got 1.7Mil$ and their sand is not as nice as yours.
You sue.
The court agrees your beach is nicer and sets the price at 2Mil$. The lawyer gets 300K$ and you get 1.7Mil$. Also the lawyer gets office expenses, so he/she gets more than 300K$.
The price differential has to be as high as your example or it's not worth it. Plus the riskier the case the higher the lawyer's %.
No, the lawyer only gets a percentage of the portion of the final award that is greater than the state's offer. So in your example where the state offers $1.7m and you get $2m, the lawyer gets 1/3 of the difference, i.e. $100k.
Also contingency fees are typically 1/3. They're usually not significantly lower, and are virtually never ever higher, since lawyers are only allowed to charge reasonable fees.
Of course, it's up to the client as to whether they want to hire a lawyer on contingency or not. They can always pay hourly fees up front, win or lose. Contingencies result in payments only if you win, and at the end of the case, but since the lawyer would be taking quite a risk, they can be higher.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
This socialist approach will discourage the investment of capital in drug companies, and discourage the investment of drug companies on R&D.
Terrible idea! Stick to software people!
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
The sued the govt and maybe the story that all the companies from WWI _voluntarily_ pooled their resources, is just that - a nice story.
0 5-425395.html
The US govt took Pitcairn helicopter related patents and gave them to various Defense Contractors, I believe the Pitcairn lawsuit was successful but there may be a gag order, not sure.
Pitcairn references:
The US Govt "bought" their airfield: http://www.cnrma.navy.mil/nasjrbwg/history.htm
Autogiro Company of America v. The United States: National Air and Space Museum 10.9 ft^3 of stuff...
Early aviation pioneer: http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/113-010120
To modify the grandparent:
Wow... an example of eminent domain/Just Compensation being used improperly = eminent domain/Just compensation is evil...
WTF is wrong with you?
Patents? Expire? Holy shit, there's a concept.
When a drug patent comes close to expiring (which they'll prolong), the company generally makes a chemical change to the drug just slight enough such that it can pass as something different (e.g. adding an extraneous methyl group or similar), change the packaging around, maybe make it a 12hr dose instead of 6hrs, and say "WHOA HOLY SHIT NEW DRUG HERE!" and get a new patent. That heartburn/acid reflux drug that I'm totally forgetting the name of now (Nexiium?) is a prime example of this... it's been "reformulated" about three times now, each time is 6-10 years of $billions in profit with basically no new R&D.
That's just the surface, for popular my-job-sucks-and-i'm-fat-so-gimme-a-pill-doc type drugs for the anesthetized middle class in the first world. The really sick things, imho, have to do with the way that they will consider the maximum profit to be extracted from a disease as part of the research process. That means that if there is more money to be made from treatments for an illness than from a cure, guess what comes to market.
Further, the high costs of drugs in the firstworld go primarily to support advertising budgets. Not R&D. Pull the yearly SEC filings for somebody like Merck or Pfizer if you doubt. So that medicine you open your wallet deeply for is primarily going to fund the millions of crappy ball point pens that they fart out to doctors everywhere. (Ask a doctor sometime about the lengths a pharma salesperson will go to. It is unreal.)
Big Pharma does things routinely that make Big Oil or Big Tobacco look like motherfucking saints in comparison. There's a reason I've taken my chemistry degree and run for the I.T. hills to work as a programmer... So maybe my days are spent in a cube, but my days aren't spent in a cube figuring out ways to make money off of the suffering of other human beings.
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
In the SCOTUS case private indivuduals are exploiting government force to acquire private property against the wishes of the former owners.
Looks to me like both the government and the manipulating individuals are wrong.
The US Military Tribunal that decided the case of IG Farben at the Nuremberg trials would probably have agreed. (In brief, the executives of Farben (a chemical company) were held criminally responsible for Farben's seizure of property. The seizure was often done via Nazi government force, or was done with the connivance of the Nazis. The executives were held guilty despite all the dressings of legality they had draped themselves with at the time).
Er...great, from patents to Nazi regimes so smoothly in this thread. An indicator of the times we live in?
No one's talking about setting up their own little country. Sheesh, it's amazing what some people can read into posts.
Assuming you have rights and priviledges is a silly thing to do...
What's silly is assuming that "might makes morality". I don't care how despotic the government is, my rights are still my rights. It is of course, prudent to heed the demands of government, but that doesn't mean I have to be happy about it.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Even with publicly funded research, it still costs hundreds of millions of dollars for companies to bring new drugs to market. The costs of drug trials will not change if someone else pays for them. For profit companies will do better at reducing those costs than non-profits. The best way to reduce the costs of bringing new drugs to market is to reduce regulation.
The FDA is still a decent watchdog. The risks of Vioxx and Celebrex are now very well known, and there is no reason to prevent informed consumers from making the choice of the risks and benefits of those drugs against the competition.
"...I call you my base"
It was as much Al Gore and Hillary Clinton's base. They and others were also at the Alfred E. Smith memorial dinner for charity.
Not only that Thomas Crapper got four royal warrants. I read a book about him years ago. Amongst other things he tested his products thoroughly (something a lot of s/w developers still need to learn).
Did he inhale?
Since a patent is a legislative grant, the government doesn't need to aquire them by eminent domain. The legislature can let the drug companies keep the patents, but just change the law underneath them. Say cap the amount of the awards for infringements of the listed patents at $1 per year per corporation and disallow specific performance remedies, making the patents violatable at a tiny cost.
The legislature can do the same for copyrights, making it easy to gut the GPL if it interferes with government use of any critical software.
Has it occurred to anyone that we might actually like some of our infrastructure?
So the government could determine a fair market value for Linux et al., and maybe reimburse the populace in a class-action manner by offering them discounted licences for proprietary software?
You know, this could really be a way of making the GPL more business friendly...
Yes, this is a *very* extreme conclusion, but I'm curious as to just how far such legalities could be drawn.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
An erosion of property rights ( real property and not the ill-named intellectual property ) is a sign that the country is heading towards a state of either lawlessness ( if the victims rebel ) or serfdom ( if the victims meekly surrender ). Neither of these two situations is very desirable or pleasant.
The doublesided standard of people VS corporations in eminent domain is fairly disgusting as well; it is being abused as much as the patent system is, operating far from the original intent of the framework. Could you imagine a city permitting the homeless to move into and occupy the head offices of some large corporation in the name of eminent domain?
Corporations are vulnerable to having their corporate charter revoked however. I suppose all copyrights, patents and trademarks owned by the corporation at that point in time become Public Domain material usable by anyone without restriction.. or would the government seize and retain ownership of these?
... Please, it's Lessig . Aside from its (numerous) superficial flaws, the post is babbling and nearly incoherent--who the hell modded this thing up?
(Correct me if I'm wrong, IANAL, etc)
NAFTA brought them in. American patents on software are valid in Canada, and are just as valid as if you were in the states.
Unless I misread NAFTA. NAFTA is incredibly difficult to get through, likely on purpose.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
You are confusing the concept of finding a patent invalid or unenforceable (meaning you either have no property right because you did not meet all the requirements of the patent statute in the former case, or you will not be allowed to enforce your property right because you somehow misused that property in the latter case) with the concept of the Government taking that property for its own use. These are all basic legal concepts. However, the interesting issue is whether a STATE government can take a piece of property that was issued by the FEDERAL government.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
industry lawyers warned a legislative advisory council away from proposing such action on patents, claiming it would be unconstitutional.
Not to mentionm that there would never ever be any new drugs because the drug companies wouldn't have the money to conduct the research..
This is just one more step towards socialism of medicine...
Let's say we are arguing then I pull out a gun, you will be forced to respond... or die (lose the arguement) really it can be a very compelling arguement.
But this is beside the point, first off the good of the many over the good of the few.
The government thinks of companies as producing goods and distributing them to the people the exchange of money doesn't enter into their thinking, this is why companies seem to get more breaks.
As Alan Sherman points out in his book, Rape of the A*P*E, if you think you own private property, try doing any of the following:
Smoke marijuana on your private property
Dance about naked on the front porch of your private property
Commit murder and bury the body on your private property
Take your private property and sell it to the government of another country
Build a 100 foot wall around your private property
Put up a toll booth and charge admission to the tax collector when they visit your private property
(These are all from memory; my copy of the book has long since self-destructed from all its anti-government and free-love spouting, and its hilarious "Short Chapter, Long Footnote."
"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"
Have you ever been involved in a lawsuit?
I'll defer to you on the methodology of the numbers, but you seem to have a rather positive view of the legal system. But it seems to me that it is subject to upfront agreements and forgive me if I'm somewhat jaded as to what reasonable means.
But anyways thanks for the response.
I'll be following this case closely.
Have you ever been involved in a lawsuit?
Depends on what stage you're talking about. Everything I've been involved in got dropped or was settled before getting to court. But my legal career is still just getting started, so ask again sometime. Mostly though, I expect to be doing transactional work.
I'll defer to you on the methodology of the numbers, but you seem to have a rather positive view of the legal system.
Well, I'm a lawyer. Generally I find that when you study the system carefully for several years, you find that it's designed pretty sensibly, and that numerous alternatives tend to be considered and if rejected, for a good, if perhaps subtle, reason.
But it seems to me that it is subject to upfront agreements and forgive me if I'm somewhat jaded as to what reasonable means.
Well, sort of. Contingency fees are not available in some areas -- divorce proceedings, for example. But when they are, the decision as to whether to pay one is up to the client. They can always pay the up-front hourly fee, whether they win or lose, and keep the award to themselves. The worst a lawyer can do is not take a case of a client that comes in the door.
As for the reasonable amounts, 1/3 is the common practice. Sometimes fees might be paid in some form other than money (e.g. a business might pay in equity) but these sorts of things are on thin ice, and while sometimes allowable get watched closely.
Anyway, you might be interested to read the Rules of Professional Conduct. All jurisdictions have them, and lawyers are obligated to follow them or risk being sanctioned or disbarred. Bars generally require applicants to the bar to have either taken certain classes in them, or to have achieved certain scores on the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam (which is distinct from the LSAT or Bar Exam).
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I wonder how easy it would be for a state to say "we ban ingestion or injection of medication X within our borders" and use the threat as leverage?
Sure, companies would cry foul saying it was an interstate-commerce issue, but the states would retort "we aren't banning the sale or possession, only the use" and claim 10th-ammendment rights to do so.
Another option is to tax any drug at 1000% of the cost-per-day over $1 and use that to fund indigent health care. Just the threat of such legislation might bring the drug companies to the bargaining table.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Well, I'm a lawyer. Generally I find that when you study the system carefully for several years, you find that it's designed pretty sensibly, and that numerous alternatives tend to be considered and if rejected, for a good, if perhaps subtle, reason.
I've used a similar logic thread when describing the FAA's system. I can buy that.
I work in a company (aviation) that gets sued a lot, about 50 to 60 times a year. The result of this is to force jobs and companies overseas. This is real. We compete against companies who are based offshore (USA shore that is, I realize it's a relative term) and those companies many times have no US assets. I am a "little" sensitive.
Anyways, we in Connecticut are watching this land grab by the Town of New London with interest. For a state rich in Revoluntionary War history it really seems surreal. No doubt in my mind the politico's state and local are watching the public reaction very closely.