Slashdot Mirror
Should a New Technology Change the Patent System?
linuxizer writes "Congress seems poised to turn an effort to create a pathway for generic biotech drugs, such as Remicade, into the exact opposite. Instead of the 5-year protection that traditional pharmaceuticals get, or the 0-year protection that the FTC recommends, the bill offers 12-year exclusivity with renewability for minor changes. The issue is highly charged, with activists waging a campaign to change the bill. Yet it also raises interesting questions for other technologies. To what extent do the traditional contours of patent law need to change in response to new technologies with a different set of market realities (biotech drugs are 22 times more expensive on average, and development costs for generics will be substantially higher) and in what direction? Need every new technological category get its own patent rules, and how do those rules get decided?"
There's a reason why the majority of drug research is done in the US: we don't force drug companies to give away their products for free. Oh, and incidentally, one of the reasons drugs cost so much here is because other countries do put price controls in place, so we end up carrying the burden for those slackers.
Oh really? Please provide citations for this Fox News talking point. I'm quite sure that 6 of the 10 largest global pharma companies are European.
The reason why you pay thrice as much as "those slackers" is you screwed up health-insurance supervision: Big Pharma bribes doctors to prescribe brand-name medication at hugely inflated prices, and neither the patient cares (since he's not paying for it) nor the insurance industry (since they can just jack up their rates).