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Supreme Court To Consider First Sale of Imports
Animaether passes along a legal tale that "doesn't involve the kind of cutting-edge issues that copyright lawyers usually grapple with in the digital age [and] sounds like the kind of lawsuit that should have been resolved 200 years ago," yet still "is very much a product of the Internet-driven global economy." "Can copyright owners assert rights over imported goods that have already been sold once? That is the issue before the Supreme Court in Costco Wholesale Corp v. Omega, S.A. (backstory here). What's at stake is the ability of resellers to offer legitimate, non-pirated versions of copyrighted goods, manufactured in foreign nations, to US consumers at prices that undercut those charged by the copyright holders."
What's good for the goose must be good for the gander, no?
Surely this should be a foregone conclusion
Well, this was pretty clear 200 years ago: Property was real and tangible. Copyright existed to protect the authors of works from publishers and printing presses using their work without paying for it. Fast forward 200 years and now we have copyright being applied to something that's intangible, can be copied for effectively zero cost, and has been hob-cobbled together to encompass intangible things like phrases, lines of code, even the "likeness" or "appearance" of something is not copyrightable. Given this vast expansion of the definition of copyright (for better or for worse, depending on who you ask), of course there's going to come a day when the tangible thing -- a legitimate CD purchased through legitimate channels could be declared illegal because it's being used incorrectly.
Copyright no longer covers just possession of a thing -- it's now been expanded to include the use of a thing as well, and that latter definition is what's causing most of the problems.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
You decide to outsource your programmer in bengladore, your sale rep in ireland, your telephonic support in china ? Welllll we decide to buy our game from import from the global market. Too bad they undercut your local monopoly price. Global market baby. You outsource our job, we outsource our buying. Fair is fair.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I thought I had a decent understanding of the three legal spheres grouped under "Intellectual Property": patents, copyright and trademarks. But I don't understand why copyright is involved in this specific case. Wouldn't Omega's logo stamped on products be something protected as a trademark, not as a copyrighted work?
in which you will buy everything, but own nothing ...
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The planet needs a global, multinational currency. That will stop the problems about different prices for each country, problems about manufacturing costs and problems about the purchasing power of everyone. No longer will manufacturing things in China or offering customer support from India be profitable. In return, people will once again have money to spend and the money will flow more freely (both figuratively and literally).
This reminds me of when US taxpayers were forced to foot the bill for taking Beanie Babies from people who legally purchased them, just to protect a pricing scheme. Some free market.
Sorry about the bad link.
i'd like to see how first sale doctrine would go with purchased mp3s. or better, ones given away for free. awhile back, amazon gave away like 11 mojo nixon albums. can i sell those (and delete originals) for whatever i want? i mean, if they were cds, i could, so...
...
Easier to steal everything off internets.
So, if I live in England, legally buy an Omega watch there, then legally immigrate to the US, it is now a copyright violation to resell that watch on eBay?!? This flies in the face of common sense!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Copyright is an artificial government grant of monopoly over reproduction and public performance of a work. A foreign import isn't reproduced under that monopoly grant and is thus illegal to import or sell in the US. Black letter law guys. The fact that in small quantities (and marked up over the closest local version as in the typical import album) the rights holders don't mind, but they still possess an absolute legal monopoly on reproduction of copies for sale inside the US so if they do decide they don't like an import they have the right to forbid it.
And the same legal theory exists in most, but not all, other countries.
You don't have to agree with the reasoning behind copyright, you don't even have to belive they should exist. The fact is they do exist and unless you want to change the law it is what it is. This isn't even a DMCA like abuse of the copyright clause in the US Constitution, it is the very heart of what copyright is.
Democrat delenda est
I read the article, and I have to say that I am still baffled by how much US law relies on precedents. Judges are fallible humans. Even after several rounds of appeals, erroneous judgements happen. Prior to emancipation, the US Supreme Court issued rulings in favor of owning slaves. If the court followed precedent, then it should have ruled against Lincoln's emancipation proclamation. Ruling on precedent is the same as answering the question "why do we do this?" by saying "because we always have." Why does so much of US law rest on precedent, when it's obvious that past rulings are sometimes (often) flawed? Please, don't say "because we always have."
Tesco (think British Wal-mart) was legal purchasing Levi's jeans in Europe from wholesalers, and then reselling them in the UK for lower price than Levi's wanted them sold there. Levi's sued them, and won. We can only hope the US Supreme Court sees things differently.
I don't know why it's a copyright issue, since it's a physical item, but usually we call such legitimate imports "grey market" goods. They're not officially for sale ("white market") nor are they illegal to sell ("black market"), but they're legally sold goods for distribution elsewhere that's re-imported for local sale.
Happens all the time even with IP materials like books, CDs and DVDs. Hell, Amazon and Walmart are probably the biggest "offenders" - I can buy two CDs, one locally and one from Amazon (or Walmart) and the local one is from the Canadian distributor, while the one I got from Amazon (or Walmart) comes from the US.
Ditto books - sometimes the US-Canadian book pricing is so out of whack, it's cheaper to get it from Amazon.com than Amazon.ca even with shipping charges.
Camera manufacturers used to be the biggest PITA regarding grey market goods - if you imported a camera, they would insist that warranties and such were only honored in the purchasing country - buy it in the US, service is done in the US, other countries would not touch it. Oh yeah, and the return shipping, to that address in the country.
Thankfully, for most products this doesn't happen (it's not strictly illegal, but it's a great way to piss off customers) anymore - I figure most companies gave up trying to track serial numbers and points of origin, and lets them move inventory around as needed by demand.
Of course, importation of such products is perfectly legal.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, practicing judicial activism in the face of common sense since I would wager most /.'rs can remember.
Whether it's overzealous application of honest separation of church and state (Newdow v. U.S. Congress) or trampling our already shaky right to privacy (Kyllo v. United States) my heart is simply aflutter to hear what they come up with next.
The first-sale doctrine doesn't apply to copyright? Does the Copyright Act have a parallel provision to s. 526 of the Tariff Act of 1922?
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Or am I missing something?
If the importer imported it, he/she purchased it (or obtained it on consignment, which is probably unlikely), and can do with it what they wish.
As far as controlling a use of a thing, that would be a matter for a license, not a copyright.
I do recall a case in Canada, though, where an importer of toy cars obtained them legitimately, but was barred from selling them and competing with an "official" agent, on the basis of the copyright on the packaging, but I think that was a different case: while the toy was legit, the license to print packaging outside of Canada was not.
In Liberty, Rene
If the Supreme Court makes a stupid ruling on this college students will be even more screwed than they are already. "International Editions" of textbooks are usually less than half the cost of a "domestic" edition and have the exact same content most of the time.
Does this mean someone explained to them the difference between an e-mail and a pager?
At what point was the watch disassembled at a molecular level and then reproduced in bulk by a nano-lathe?
As an aside, what's with the unauthorized "lending" restrictions printed on some DVD covers and inside some books? Reselling? Hmmm....
An old roommate of mine was from India, and he could order engineering textbooks from back home in India for equivalent of US$3 or $5 or so, the bookstore would sell the same title to me for $85 or so. Amazon wasn't up quite yet back then, but still not nearly as cheap as India anyway. My friend says the price difference must be due to lower quality of paper the Indian coy was printed on. Eh, sorry, your paper may be a bit floppier, but I don't think that difference is worth around US$80.
It has long been held as illegal to engage in price fixing. Region coding for DVDs, for example, is most often used for the purpose of controlling initial distribution (which is their right) to release certain things in certain areas at certain times (which is not their right entirely). Once something is legally sold, they no longer own the rights to anything about it excepts for its duplication which includes various forms of duplication such as public playback or performance. But to individually sold items are no longer under the control of the publisher and the disc or tape or book can be transported and sold anywhere else. All of this is established in precedent or is otherwise understood as common law. You can buy a book, sell a book or even lend a book. Why this wouldn't apply to DVDs or other media defies logic. To make this truly the case, they will have to redefine copyright law to disallow someone to resell that which they have bought. This would be a very bad move for copyright holders as fewer people would be interested in buying something they couldn't later liquidate if some unfortunate event occurs in the future. Instead, people would do only rental and, of course, illegal copying.
Copyright holders have long wanted to be able to control the resale of their goods. Take, for example, the diamond trade -- they really have it the way they want it. Diamonds are super expensive new but if you try to sell one, you will find you will not get much for it... and further, you will find their prices "used" as more than inexpensive. (Wanna buy an engagement ring? Go to a pawn shop.... seriously) But law all around the planet have made this sort of control over the market illegal. This is why DeBeers cannot operate in the U.S. and many other countries legally. If copyright holders want that level of control, they will find themselves unable to operate legally in the very countries they do business. It's conceivable that they would simply buy laws that exclude their own products, but buying laws are a tricky thing and subject to constitutional rules.
Regulate the US Market and its bye bye medical research.
While it is true that the US does a good bit of the heavy lifting in medical research, it is FAR from true that all medical research depends on the US. Many medical companies and research institutions exist and are headquartered outside the US including some of the biggest pharmaceutical companies. Plenty of research goes on across the world without the US being involved.
Please note that I'm not dismissing your general thesis completely - price controls are something to be approached with great caution. However it is not fair to say that all price regulation is a bad idea. Access to medicine is a moral issue as much as it is an economic one. Many medicines are sold for profit margins that are hard to justify to anyone with a conscience. It's fine for drug companies to make a profit, a handsome profit even. But resources for medical care are finite and just because a drug company is able to charge a lot doesn't always mean they should.
What Would Karl Marx Do? It's precisely bullshit like this that provoked Marx and others to try to imagine alternative economic systems based on objectivity rather than emotion and greed. The ONLY reason there's even an argument is because we tolerate people and businesses setting prices based on everything except the actual cost of manufacture. Maybe the debate should center on whether it's ethical to allow the same product to be sold at different prices in different locales? Big Pharma, I'm looking at YOU.
I would challenge the argument that the Omega is copyrighted by pointing out that it was put on the product by the manufacturer, and the right to use the product was acquired by a legal purchase, and moreover exerting that right is indivisible from the product and thus the logo.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
... and the foreign sale was authorized by the copyright holder, isn't that the first sale?
If the authorized foreign sale doesn't count under US law, the copies made abroad should not get copyright protection when outside the US. The copyright holders should not be able to enjoy this "have your cake and eat it too" situation where they receive copyright protection abroad (under international treaties) while selling it, and then get to block importation into the US by making the foreign sale not count as a first sale.
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There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
Omega is should stop whining and follow footsteps of companies like Rolex.
In the world of luxury watches it is all about prestige. Rolex watches cost probably around $500 to make and yet the cheapest models sell for 10x. On top of that Rolex will refuse to service any watch with non-Rolex parts. Combine this with regular prices increases and you can produce millions of watches which are sold at a high price. Sure, laws vary from country to country but I dare you to find brand new authentic Rolex watches that are 40% cheaper than comparable models sold at authorized dealers.
Omega wants to expand the market and they sell their timepieces around the globe. The market is flooded with cheap authentic Omegas to the point where authorized dealers will give you 20% off MSRP right away without any negotiation. And honestly I don't see why not. Why should I, a person living in the US spend $2K on a watch that is sold for $1K in a different world country. If Omega really wants to get a free market, then it should treat every consumer equally regardless of where consumers live. If they cannot do it, then they should stop bitching about gray markets.
the pyramid is too low in height. 7% of population in usa controls 72% of financial wealth for example. i very much doubt that any one of us here will enter that percentage. its already full.
thats of course, leaving aside the ethics of accepting to live in such a bastardly society, after securing one's butt.
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That reminds me of what was once said about the Ferengi: they don't seek to end exploitation, they seek to become one of the exploiters.
This is the type of case they accept simply so they can shut the door on any gray area.
They are going to rule that the goods can not be brought into the country.
Please don't get your hopes up that this will lead to any sensible IP reform.
Buying something cheap in one place and shipping it to someplace else where you sell it for a profit, even if you have to price it less than the other people at that second location is and has been a mainstay of trade and commerce for at least 6,000 years.
And no, you don't get to say squat about it if you sell it to this guy for one price, and he sells it somewhere else for another. The fact that you sell in both locations (but at different prices), thus making this scenario a possibility is your own fault. The only thing you can do is sell the same product for the same price in all locations. If you don't like it, get out of the market.
(1) That this use of the patent monopoly to restrain competition in the marketing of the unpatented tablets for use with the patented machines, and to aid in the creation of a limited monopoly in the tablets not within that granted by the patent, is contrary to the public policy of the United States evinced by the Constitution and the patent law. P. 314 U. S. 491.
(2) The patentee, while engaged in such practice, cannot have an injunction to retrain the making and leasing of infringing machine. P. 314 U. S. 492.
2. It is a principle of general application that courts, and especially courts of equity, may appropriately withhold their aid where the plaintiff is using the right asserted contrary to the public interest. P. 314 U. S. 492.
And Lasercomb v. Reynolds explicitly recognized "misuse of copyright" as a legitimate defense analogous to "misuse of patents":
We are of the view, however, that since copyright and patent law serve parallel public interests, a “misuse” defense should apply to infringement actions brought to vindicate either right. As discussed above, the similarity of the policies underlying patent and copyright is the great and historically has been consistently recognized. Both patent law and copyright law seek to increase the store of human knowledge and arts by rewarding inventors and authors with the exclusive rights to their works for a limited time. At the same time, the granted monopoly power does not extend to property not covered by the patent or copyright. Morton Salt,314 U.S. at 492 ; Paramount Pictures, 334 U.S. at 156-58;16cf. Baker v. Selden, 101U.S. 99, 101-04 (1880).
Instead, Costco's defense is that 17 USC 109(a) precludes 602(a), which the 9th found lacking on the basis that foreign copies don't qualify as "under Title 17" for 109(a). I can't imagine the USSC reversing that finding, because it would as a consequence allow importation of duplicates made in countries without any IP law, which would seem to be against the intent of 602(a).
I have to ask: what the fuck is wrong with you? Copyright is a monopoly on reproduction. Okay. What part of buying something and selling it again involves reproduction in any fucking shape or form? Where in this process is the copy made? It's like, you're writing in standard English, but all I read is meaningless bullshit, so I ask again, what the fuck is wrong with you?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...overseas discount web retailers have suddenly stopped selling products from a US company which is known for not liking to be undercut. :)
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Gold-based economies are a disaster. Please go read the history of economics in the 1800s and then come back. I recommend coming back under a different user name, since you're going to be too embarrassed to use this one any more.
You have to pretty much throw away any pretense of fairness for a doctrine which holds that every copyright applies in every country, but first sale rights (copyright exhaustion) only apply in the country of first sale.
This happens all the bloody time with eBay. Particuarly with nutritional supplements (eg body builder stuff.) But also all that crazy "as seen on tv" junk.
As soon as someone re-imports it back to the US, the US copyright holder sends a VeRO notice to eBay telling them to remove it, and the next 3 months are spent having the lawyers argue first sale doctrine like in the story here.
I purchased a Coach purse for my mother in law for $300 in the US as a gift. When we went to Kuala Lumpur on for a v isit, she pointed out the exact same purse at Coach in KLCC went for $1000 US.
So, if I live in England, legally buy an Omega watch there, then legally immigrate to the US, it is now a copyright violation to resell that watch on eBay?!? This flies in the face of common sense!
If you live in England, remember that the opposite is true as well: if you visit USA, buy a copyrighted item and bring it back home, you can't legally resell it there. The EU Copyright Directive explicitly limits the doctrine of first sale to first sales within EU (or actually within ETA, which includes also Norway &c).
Yes, but in Southeast Asia you can get a pretty decent fake Coach purse around the corner from the mall for $5-10, the quality of which more than satisfies most people. Some probably think they're real, even, unless the label is misspelled. You can get fake Omegas and Rolexes for about the same price, too, though in that case the quality is usually visibly awful and (assuming it works in the first place) will last a couple weeks at most.
So who is going to be buying the real ones? Two groups of people: those who have enough money that the difference between $300 and $1000 is not terribly important, and tourists who think they're getting a great deal on everything simply because they're in SE Asia and haven't done their research. Of course, the tourists are more likely than locals to fit into the first group as well. This is ironic... more on that later.
That said, you *will* get great deals on high-quality, non-counterfeit clothing and the like in SE Asia if you're smart about it. For example, in Chiang Mai, Thailand I picked up some incredibly nice dress shirts from a London label for around $15-20 from the clearance section (normally $30-40 which is still good). It was a bit of an impulse purchase and I didn't do any research regarding them until afterward, but it was obvious that they were good quality, nice-looking shirts, sold in a reputable high-end department store in a mall, and that compared to prices I'd seen for similar quality in the US it was obviously a steal. I looked up the company later and found the same shirts (the next season's version, anyway, which were basically the same) selling for $200-300 on the internet.
It's definitely hit or miss, though... certain overtly "designer" things like Coach purses, high-end electronics, etc - luxury goods, not just "nice" versions of everyday stuff - cost about the same, or more, in SE Asia and the US. That includes things like expensive watches, other than Omega apparently, as the parent described.
Now the ironic part - certainly a large percentage of people who are in a position to afford Omega watches and the like in these countries where they're sold more cheaply are foreigners, for the reason I described earlier. Dropping the price from $2000 to $1000 doesn't make much of a difference to the locals, but will entice a lot more foreign tourists to buy one - people who are fairly rich but who wouldn't have paid full price back home.
For most things, price disparity depending on the local economy makes a certain amount of sense. People have to be able to afford your product. But when you're selling a purely luxury product, the market doesn't really support such price disparity. Omega brought this upon themselves... they are severely hurting their image not just for the stupid lawsuit, but also by exposing the fact that they greatly discount in other countries. Personally, if I was ever in the position of being able to afford an expensive watch (likely never, to be fair), I would have gotten an Omega over anything else (partially due to James Bond product placement, but also because they look great anyway), but their status in my mind has now dropped considerably.
With a global market and the internet, luxury goods companies are in a lot of trouble.
Let's back down a min from calling everything "invented". I've had "crazy muscle twitches" that were funny, but not fake.
I vaguely recall there being one such event that has to do with low magnesium.
And therein rests the second half of the argument. Sometimes we *have* cures for stuff! But since it's old enough to be cheap and not Extortionable, the reason those drug CO's have huge ad budgets is to invent *alternative* versions of the *same* drug so they can *remarket* it!
Your leg going all twitchy on you? Dig around in your vitamin collection for one with high magnesium and take 3X the standard dose. Skies Alive, THREE TIMES!? Yes... because by definition of something being available OTC it has to have a safety profile where even something like 8 times the recommended dose won't do more than make you uncomfortable in most cases. The dividing line to be Prescription Only is when the dose is calibrated sharply enough where a double dose may be tricky.
So take your 3X vitamin dose and watch your twitches go away. But that's no fun for board meetings is it?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
"That little doodle" looks like it is only a very shallow engraving. If Costco loses the lawsuit, I guss they could remove the logo in question without doing much damage to the watch ;-)
C - the footgun of programming languages
In the past, I owned / operated a small electronic sales / service store in a smaller American town. Life was good, but the revenue from TV repairs wasn't quite enough to keep the business going. People were asking for high-end car stereos so I looked into becoming a dealer for a Japanese manufacturer. The requirements and restrictions they wanted were unacceptable and the wholesale pricing they offered was far too high.
What ended up being the solution was to purchase this company's products in Britain at retail and have them shipped to this country. Even after the currency exchange fees and shipping the cost was about half of what the company wanted me to pay for those items. That was fine with me and I sold them on to end customers at just under what that company wanted me to pay them as the wholesale cost.
It wasn't too many months until an electronics dealer in another town discovered that I was selling these car stereos for less than he was paying for them. He contacted the manufacturer and complained and they sent me a letter demanding that I conform to the minimum selling price or face losing their wholesale pricing. In my reply to them, I believe I suggested that they do something sexually improbable to themselves. When they threatened to sue, I just put their letters in the trash - I had no contract with them and didn't purchase anything from them so they could just go F themselves as far as I was concerned. I never revealed where I was getting their products and a lot of happy customers bought and enjoyed them.
Was I doing something wrong? I suppose it would depend on who you ask. I was happy; the additional profits were most welcome. And the customers were happy because they got a great deal on their new car stereo. Anyway, those stereos were what is commonly called "gray market" goods. That's a curious designation - the only "law" that was being violated was a dealer agreement that I wasn't a party to. If that manufacturer would have had their own way, my customers would have paid twice as much for their car stereos. Some might say that the stereo manufacturer was engaging in price fixing.
The whole idea of a producer of goods being able to dictate what those goods sell for at retail is a curious concept. It's legal and American law allows "minimum selling price" agreements. But is it good for consumers? Or is it just another way that corporations take advantage? That stereo manufacturer was happy to take the British price for those stereos but somehow when I sold them in the USA at a profit they felt that they were being harmed.
These anti-consumer agreements are everywhere - but nobody will tell you about them. Next time you're shopping for a deal on some item and notice that it's exactly the same price at every dealer you check - you're looking at a "minimum selling price" item. Nobody will give you a discount because if they do their source of supply will be cut off. So when you buy an Apple product - or a Timex watch - or hundreds of other items you're paying a higher price than the dealer might offer you. What does it mean for competition when all competitors have to sell at the same price?
There's no such thing as a "free market" when a third party to a sales transaction can dictate the terms of that transaction. Look around you and you'll see this kind of consumer abuse everywhere. We've been putting up with this for a long time - it's time for a change and I hope Costco can make a start at changing this situation.
I thought I was buying a watch. And in any case, I can resell a times newspaper no problem. that's copyrighted. same with region 1 DVDs
The article summary here is totally wrong. From TFA, this is about Omega's ability to block Costco, etc. from selling authentic Omegas on the resale market at below what Omega wants the price to be at jewelry stores (similar to the expensive wine resale embargoes where they'll say stuff like "price too low to print!" in the advertising).
stuff |
When I traveled in SE Asia I observed this as well: On several occasions items were more expensive there than in the U.S. Of course most of the stores I visited where next to my five star hotel and I am not sure if prices reflected the location.
Overall, items that are truly luxurious are priced the same way across the globe. I visited Land Rover dealerships and luxury stores where prices were not that different from what you see in U.S. cities. For brands like Gucci, Louis Vitton, etc. price is everything. They will never discount, they will never go on sale. In fact, some makers produce only a certain number of specific items to ensure that demand is greater than supply. I suppose that if you sell quality watches and shoes that are hand made in the U.K. or Italy it makes sense -- you want to differentiate yourself from the rest of the world and you do provide quality jobs to people in Western nations.
I really enjoyed watching pawn stars and antiques roadshow before I knew it was a show about criminals breaking copyright law.
In large businesses, profit is reinvested in the company.
Not necessarily. It is often distributed as a dividend or used to repurchase stock. Very substantial sums are used for these purposes in many cases.
A few percent might go to bonuses for executives
That is by definition not profit. A bonus is an expense. The company does not in any way have to make a profit to pay a large bonus to an executive. (Disclosure: I'm a certified accountant)
In the case of a drug research company, much of the profit probably goes into R&D, since that's probably their biggest expense
"Probably"? Why not look at an actual income statement? The largest expense for large drug companies is sales and administration (SG&A). In the case of Pfizer. SG&A for Pfizer in their most recent quarterly report is almost double their R&D costs.
Furthermore it's not actually accurate to call R&D reinvested profits. R&D is a cost just like salaries. It's one with a lot of discretion in it but it is an expense and does not require profits to incur that expense. In fact most drug companies incur substantial loses due to R&D until they have one or more salable products. Ultimately the company must be profitable to sustain R&D expenses but that doesn't change the accounting treatment.
So the high drug costs are funding more drug research. Where do they get R&D money from, after all, if not from drug sale profits?
Careful - you can fund R&D with low cost drugs too, you just have to sell larger quantities. It's easier with a high profit margin but not absolutely required. However in NO large pharmaceutical company is all the profit plowed back into R&D. For Pfizer their Net Income after tax in 2009 was almost double their R&D costs. That means there is plenty of room for prices to come down without Pfizer actually needing to touch $1 of their R&D expense.
Put another way: if you cut drug company profits, are they going to make up for it by cutting dividends and executive salaries, or by cutting R&D and releasing fewer innovative drugs?
The fact that drug companies might choose to overpay executives and hurt their future prospects is an issue I'm willing to let the shareholders deal with. A drug company that makes a habit of cutting R&D as a percentage of revenue is going to find itself in trouble sooner or later.
If you want to cut drug costs, you have to cut R&D costs – like by making drug approval trials much, much cheaper.
No, sorry your logic doesn't hold. An executive MIGHT chose to cut R&D but as I've established before, profits greatly outweigh R&D expenditures for large pharma companies so there is plenty of room to cut prices before there is an actual need to cut R&D. If a drug company cuts R&D, then they are running the risk of having no future products to sell - basically trading future profits for immediate profits.
Look, I don't actually have a problem with pharma companies making a handsome profit. They're taking a lot of risk and should be rewarded for success. But don't pretend that the drug industry isn't highly profitable and some of those profits come at the expense of people's lives. To some degree that is necessary but at the end of the day treatment of disease is the goal, not profits.