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?"
We should also ask are the copyright laws legitimate? The original copyright laws originated in Britain in 1710 as an act “for the encouragement of learning” and “for the encouragement of learned men to compose and write useful books”. It's right that they protect musicians too but when a music company can contrive for some teenage nit wit to be hyped in all the music media and then sell millions of copies of some ditty at a replication cost so close to nothing that it may as well be free can this be fair? Hasn't the music industry neglected it's initial reason for being and now become interested only in supporting itself and neglecting the msuci? Isn't it ripping everyone off? Let the audience decide http://tinyurl.com/yj7zbok