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Biotech Report Says IP Spurs Innovation
ananyo writes "A report presented at the 2012 BIO International Convention in Boston, Massachusetts suggests that patents do not stifle progress when they occur at early phases of research, as some have suggested. Over the past decade, increases in patents have been matched by growth in the biotech and pharmaceutical sectors in India, Brazil, Singapore and other countries with emerging economies. The strength of patent rights can be quantified in an index ranging from 0 (no patent rights) to 5 (very strong). Over time, the countries that U.S. biotech and pharmaceutical companies have invested in have moved up the IP barometer, the report (PDF) says."
Internet Protocol Spurs Innovation
Let's all focus on software patents rather than all patents in general. The argument is much more cut and dry. If we focus all our energy on getting rid of software patents, I think it would be more beneficial than trying to reform all patent law. Once we've gotten rid of software patents, then we can move to reforming the patent law in regards to areas that are much more gray.
people invested in a broken system have enough to lose to profess faith in the broken system
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
American companies insist on having rights! The fact that they are getting those rights does not mean the rights are doing anyone any good. In fact the pharmaceutical industry is in trouble because they've been leaning on their patents instead of doing basic research. Now the patents are expiring and the companies have nothing else to offer. In that light, the patent system is doing tremendous harm.
My understanding is that patents covering genes themselves have stifled innovation. For example BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes for breast cancer patented by Myriad. Technically Myriad patented the method for discovering these genes; however, they have been using this patent to stifle genetic research.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Bank report says,"Banks are awesome!"
End of post!
We need to share the land !! Share the crops !! Share the WOMEN !! Peace !!
I kid you not (I read TFA). At least the have a good acronym (BIO).
IP just spurs IP.
Maybe innovation spurs IP, but the inverse is a lie.
When the finality of a system becomes the system itself, there is something wrong.
It's like bureaucracy, which leads to more bureaucracy.
How can we simplify the whole IP system ?
especially when they are derived from materials discovered by aboriginals in their own land thousands of years prior to the invention of the notion of intellectual property, and can then be "propertised" through the application of the rapacious maw of industrialism. "Progress" continues while profits are made, wealth is extracted, and the biosphere erased. Yes, progress. It smells like victory.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
This pro-ACTA pro-IP organization writes lots of so-called white-papers.
This is one more of the same.
Think of them as a lobbyist organization for the pro-IP side of the world
including Big Pharma and Microsoft: http://www.pugatch-consilium.com/?page_id=580
Here's their list of publications which includes pro-ACTA stuff:
http://www.pugatch-consilium.com/?page_id=590
This isn't news. It's more astroturfing by the "IP is Awesome" side of the world."
There's a reason that Microsoft and Big Pharma pays these guys. This paper is one such.
E
So it's not patents that help the growth of biomedical research, but American biotech companies help the growth of patents (either by lobbying or US pressure).
"patents do not stifle progress when they occur at early phases of research"
Implies that they do stifle progress later on.
Perception is at play here.
Investors simply want to know that they will control the market; no competition, easy profit.
This is the ONLY thing patents do if you speak of progress.
But once entrenched, those interests will do whatever it takes to dominate and control.
Patents either need to go away completely or be very limited.
But unfortunately the destructive power of greed will not allow people to "limit" patents.
So what is the solution?
Specifically, Torstensson says that over the past decade, increases in patents have been matched by growth in the biotech and pharmaceutical sectors in India, Brazil, Singapore and other countries with emerging economies (see ‘Number of biotechnology patents filed under PCT, 1977–2009).
Number of patent filings is a lagging indicator of sector growth. It does not necessarily aid growth itself, but rather is a consequence, like higher pollution emissions in industrializing regions.
There are two separate questions:
1. Is intellectual property justified?
2. Does intellectual property promote creative works?
Regardless of the answer to the second question, the answer to the first question is "no". Threatening to imprison or kill individuals, which is what all laws ultimately are, is unjustified. No, we don't deserve everything for free. Yes, it's immoral to derive value from someone's hard work without compensation. But immoral does not equal illegal. The government should, at most, be using its monopoly on violence to protect people and their property. Using violence, locking people in cages, destroying their lives, killing them, just to promote something that would exist anyways, is asinine and barbaric.
Of course it spurs innovation.
It's attracted many billions of dollars of private investment into R&D on biotech all over the world. Without the ability to recover that investment because of protection of the results of the research there would be no biotech industry to speak of.
A correlation does not a causation make.
by John Perkins. If you haven't seen it, it is worth seeing (or reading, because there is a book). We go to them and make them an offer they can't refuse: in this pocket, there is enough money to make you and your family wealthy; in this pocket there is a gun...what's it going to be?
For some reason, America has a strong desire to make the rest of the world "like us." Our foreign policy mirrors that. First we attempt to buy them off. If that doesn't work, we shoot them.
True freedom means that people are free to make their own choices, for better or for worse. Luckily, the US will step in to make sure everyone makes the right choice...and you better bet your life the right choice is that everyone ends up looking just like us.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
So a report commissioned by a convention that is sponsored by some of the largest biotech corps finds that rules which favor biotech corps' ability to lock in revenue streams without reinvesting and restricts smaller researchers ability to advance existing work to a new level are good? That sees so unlikely to happen, I'm shocked.
The problem with claiming "innovation" in the pharmaceutical industry is that they can easily bypass existing patents simply by tweaking the processes or non-essential ingredients in creating a drug to make it just different enough to claim it as a different product. That doesn't really help society at all. The rate of discoveries of "high social value" has not risen significantly in the presence of patents. See Boldrin & Levine: "Against Intellectual Monopoly", Chapter 9.
Over the past decade, increases in patents have been matched by growth in the biotech and pharmaceutical sectors in India, Brazil, Singapore and other countries with emerging economies.
In other words:
1. Over the past decade growth in the biotech and pharmaceutical sectors has been observed in India, Brazil, Singapore and other countries with emerging economies.
2. Over the past decade increases in patents in the biotech and pharmaceutical sectors in India, Brazil, Singapore and other countries with emerging economies.
I would guess these new companies that grew over the past decade in the biotech and pharmaceutical sectors in India, Brazil, Singapore and other countries with emerging economies *for various reasons*, have also secured their achievements with patents as in this days not doing so is suicidal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation
...if we make them expire in 6 months.
then, let people patent all new things.
6 moths assure you a big headstart for your company, and does not hinder everyone else.
didn't the japanese do something like that after ww2?, and endeed up getting huge advancements?
Good for this study!
Every law is a theory. Would that more receive scientific study. That it works in you mind when you rub your chin is worse than piss-poor effort.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Color me astroturf colored. Some news...
We all know that patents, in their original spirit, would be great for innovation. They help encourage inventors to invest significant up-front time, money, and other resources into development, because they know that the legal system provides them an imporant aid to getting a positive return on their investment. And so the fact that some report says that some patents in certain fields have aided innovation is redundant.
The problem that we're all on about is that the patent SYSTEM is rife with ABUSE, because there are flaws in the way patents are acquired and litigated. It is not the general concept of patents that is problematic but the stifling dark side that has arisen in the over-loaded, under-funded USPTO.
Saying that patents need to be abolished because companies abuse the system is analogous to saying that science should be abolished because there are lots of idiots out there calling themselves scientists but falsifying results and/or just doing generally poor excuses for science.
Unless of course you think that patents are a fundamentally flawed idea. To develop a system that would encourage innovation, you would need to have a strong grasp on psychology, economics, game theory, and a number of other fields to understand the complexities of the various effects such a system would have. We are probably at least decades away from even hoping to be able to create such a system, and the patent system as we pretty much know it today predated anything remotely modern in those fields. Hell, the true 'original spirit' of letters patent was to collect tax revenue without a visible tax, and the origins of the modern patent system were in limiting those clearly harmful monopolies to a subset that was less clearly harmful. That was a good decision, but they should have continued in that direction and eventually rid ourselves of those monopolies entirely.
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I'm involved in an very early stage startup. Having protected IP is almost an essential component of a startup in the medical industry for two reasons:
1) Funding -- many investors (angel and VC) won't fund projects that don't have patents (submitted or otherwise).
2) Competitive edge -- A big name company could see what you're doing, take the idea and invest huge resources to make it faster than you could. Then you're done.
For an established company, protected IP is not really a big deal. But for a small startup, it can make a huge difference in making it, and making it as a startup is quite difficult as it is.
By definition IP restricts innovation. I found this a rather compelling argument.
http://mises.org/document/3582/Against-Intellectual-Property
One thing at a time. The surest way to make sure nothing gets done is to try to do it all at once. The one thing I can agree on with agile programming is the idea that you do the work in discrete stages because it works better than doing it all at once. If you're any kind of a computer nerd, you'll see and use the analogy. If you are merely spouting a politically correct dogma because it is so kumbaya good to be all inclusive, then you are a lost cause already.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Kinsella: Against Intellectual Property, pages 19 - 21:
"Advocates of IP often justify it on utilitarian grounds. Utilitarians hold that the “end” of encouraging more innovation and creativity justifies the seemingly immoral “means” of restricting the freedom of individuals to use their physical property as they see fit. But there are three fundamental problems with justifying any right or law on strictly utilitarian grounds."
"First, let us suppose that wealth or utility could be maximized by adopting certain legal rules; the “size of the pie” is increased. Even then, this does not show that these rules are justified."
"In addition to ethical problems, utilitarianism is not coherent."
"Finally, even if we set aside the problems of interpersonal utility comparisons and the justice of redistribution and we plow ahead, employing standard utilitarian measurement techniques, it is not at all clear that IP laws lead to any change—either an increase or a decrease—in overall wealth."
You need patents as imaginary assets against onslaughts from bigger companies.
Therefore you will patent anything even remotely plausible to increase the size of your portfolio.,
As you file the 30th bogus patent, the "IP barometers" will be screaming hot with "innovation".
Sad.
If you can prove (to an independent auditor) that you spent $X in relevant R&D expenses to develop a non-obvious innovation
Given how many drugs fail clinical trials for each drug that ends up marketed, how are you going to define relevance?
Instead of "patents spurs innovation", the conclusion might be that within the current system "innovation spurs patents" and "patents spurs more patent laws".
Don't India and other not-fully-co-operating-with-American-IP-law countries use American medical patents to produce cheap knock-offs? India still has getting on a billion potential customers without exporting
This report was commissioned by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, an industry lobby group in Washington DC. Of course their report is going to say patents are good, what did you expect?
Over the past decade, increases in patents have been matched by growth in the biotech and pharmaceutical sectors in India, Brazil, Singapore and other countries with emerging economies.
The way I read it: biotech growth has kept up with IP growth DESPITE the harm IP does to the industry.
systemd is not an init system. It's a GNU replacement.
The fact is, whenever someone invents something cool, if they don't have some kind of legal protection, then someone else will come along and make a cheap knock-off. See many TiVos around? They spent R&D money developing the DVR market, and then they basically get run out of business because other companies made their cheaper (and generally much crapper) versions. That isn't exactly great encouragement for companies to invest time and money into developing new technologies. And despite what some people seem to want to imply, the FOSS approach doesn't solve every problem, because some kinds of development require specialized expertise, and that can be expensive.
The simple fact is, really good innovation doesn't pop out of a vaccuum. It requires a great deal of expertise, time, and money. For a business or individual to invest those resources, it is of great value for them to have some kind of control over who deploys similar technology. For a time. Also note that many VCs won't even look at your business plan unless they see that it will generate a significant amount of patentable technology. SOMEONE has to pay for this development, and it isn't going to be me or you, because we can't afford it.
I agree that really good innovation doesn't pop out of a vacuum. It comes from ideas from many different people crossbreeding and evolving into better ideas. Restricting the ability of ideas to 'have sex' through legal restrictions slows their evolutionary process.
Also, Tivo's not a really good example. First of all, much of the underlying technology already existed, and it appears that ReplayTV developed very similar technology concurrent. We had digital video and methods of converting analog to digital and digital to analog in realtime, we had programmable VCRs. By virtue of using a hard drive instead of tape, they escaped a lot of the drawbacks of VCRs. Furthermore, Tivo entered a market that is quite hostile to competition. They had to work with both copyright holders and cable and satellite providers, both of whom are quick to stab anyone in the back for control or a quick buck.
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Certainly, you can't deny -- although some in the anti-patent crowd still try -- that the potential for profit serves, and will always serve, as a major incentive for innovation. The patent industry is now a significant engine of global economic growth.