Violating A Patent As Moral Choice

kuzmich writes "The Taiwanese government has announced that it will violate patent laws to manufacture a drug that can help fight bird flu virus. In doing so, they have spelled out their reasoning very clearly: 'We have tried our best to negotiate with Roche, it means we have shown our goodwill to Roche and we appreciate their patent. But to protect our people is the utmost important thing'. Not being in Taiwan, this makes me wonder how bad the situation would have to be for some of the other governments to follow a path of violating patent and copyright laws for the benefit of the general population. Are there precedents, procedures for doing so?"

Comments

Re:A Simple Solution

[DoorFrame]

Well, yeah, but with eminent domain you need pay the market value for what your taking. Since there's already a market value for the drug, one which Taiwan refused to pay, you'll need to come up with another justification.

"Eminent Domain" for "Intellectual Property"

[Speare]

Personally, I think that governments (including the USA) should be more ready to stake logical claims for the betterment of their populations over the betterment of the "owners" of intellectual property. This includes copyright, trademark, patent, and trade secrets.

Now, the US Constitution guarantees reasonable compensation for seized property. This doesn't have to be cash. It can be some other equitable consideration.

For example, if Disney would surrender almost all of their old television cartoons and theatrical movies into the public domain (where they should have lapsed years ago), the US could reciprocate and give a *permanent* protection for a few of their most prized revenue source characters: Mickey Mouse and Disney's Ariel (the Little Mermaid). The population could make whatever artistic mashup they wanted from the footage, but they couldn't claim the Mouse as theirs or claim the Mouse speaks for them. If I understand, this is somewhat like the protection Britain has given Peter Pan: it's a special cultural treasure and is handled different from other properties.

Another example is for pharmaceuticals: break an effective AIDS drug patent, and we'll let you keep a certain lifestyle drug like Viagra for a longer period.

Unfortunately, Disney and Pfizer have bought enough Senators to choke the Panama Canal, and so the trade in all of their products will be protected nearly forever anyway, even without surrendering the cultural feedstock and the life-saving inventions to society as a whole.

Re:I don't blame them.

[sam_handelman]

This is drug industry propoganda.

  The majority of the expenses associated with new drug discovery are actually made in the public sector - by Universities and so forth. In broad outline the story is very similar to the Internet, also developed at public expense.

  Now, the private sector does contribute significant additional resources to drug development. HOWEVER, these additional resources are a *fraction* of the total increase in drug prices that result from the patents they are awarded (vs. what the same drugs would cost if prices were governed by a free market.)

  The upshot is that if you look at it over the long run, we would be much better off if we violated all the patents, let the patent-dependent drug companies go out of business, and funded an equivalent amount of research in the public sector, making the results available to anyone who wished to sell the resulting drugs on the market.

  The research I'm citing here was done by a fellow named Dean Baker. I'll dig up an exact ref if you like.

Re:Not right!

[LarsG]

So the Taiwanese government won't save its own citizens, and won't pay someone else to save its own citizens, but will gladly steal the results of someone else's work to save its own citizens. Doesn't it seem like Taiwan is behaving badly?

Are you saying that the government of other countries should be denied the same policy choice that the US made in the 1800s?

Re:Not right!

[masklinn]

Take away competetive pressure and companies grow fat and inefficient, just like state-run monopolies.

State monopolies are not about efficiency my good sir, they're about high-quality service and providing said service to everyone, even when it's completely inefficient to provide said service.

State monopolies are about making service available to the most people with the best QoS, they're about reaching 100% or as close as possible, not about reaching the 20% that lead to viable service economically and leaving 80% in the dust because you consider it costs too much to provide them said service.

State monopolies are about long-term vision, 10+ years when not 50+ years, when most private structures' "long term" is barely 5 years.

This is why most european rail service actually work at the moment even if they don't bring in much money, while UK rail service blows and is overpriced.

Now I don't mean that govt/state monopolies shouldn't try to be efficient, it's in fact one of their duties as users of public tax money, they owe it to the whole population of the country (said population more or less being their shareholders), but it's not and should never be their first goals. The first and most important goals of state monopolies should always be quality and reach.