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?"

Comments

Re:People with the Money Call the Shots

[dkleinsc]

Reminds me of a great moment by Dr House: When he explains to his audience that Vogler's new drug will work really well, because the old drug worked really well, and nothing significant has changed, just minor changes in order to keep the patent protection.

Re:Recoup period

[RiotingPacifist]

yeah its not like FTC know anything about trade! (did you even read their argument.)

Do you have any idea how long it takes to get drugs approved for use by the public? drugs (like software) can't simply be copied and resold, if you develop a new drug you have a good 3/4 years of no competition while a competitor gets reverse engineers it and gets approval for his version, after that you have the fact that your drugs are tried and tested and you've been producing it for 3/4 years. Patents are useful in many sectors, but medicine is even less one of them than software (especially when you consider the human cost).

IF the drug approval process was faster AND it was easy to reverse engineer drugs THEN patents are needed in medicine (probably 5 years), but until then the drug company's can shove the any proposal up their respective asses!