Apple-Motorola Judge Questions Need For Software Patents

imamac sends this quote from a Reuters report: "The U.S. judge who tossed out one of the biggest court cases in Apple's smartphone technology battle is questioning whether patents should cover software or most other industries at all. ... Posner said some industries, like pharmaceuticals, had a better claim to intellectual property protection because of the enormous investment it takes to create a successful drug. Advances in software and other industries cost much less, he said, and the companies benefit tremendously from being first in the market with gadgets — a benefit they would still get if there were no software patents. 'It's not clear that we really need patents in most industries,' he said. Also, devices like smartphones have thousands of component features, and they all receive legal protection. 'You just have this proliferation of patents,' Posner said. 'It's a problem.' ... The Apple/Motorola case did not land in front of Posner by accident. He volunteered to oversee it."

Comments

Oblig: TED Talk

[scorp1us]

Johanna Blakley's TED talk

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[ZeroSumHappiness]

What's your proposal for funding drug research?

You're probably right in that the current method is not perfect, but I could come up with a number of worse systems.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[codewarren]

You are ignoring the counter argument that it was patents which allowed the US companies to create medications in the first place. Medications that are cheap today now that patents have expired, only existed because the US made it profitable for companies to develop them in the first place.

(I'm not saying this is definitely true, just that you've acted as if the argument doesn't exist and "making drugs cheap" is an obvious solution)

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[CanHasDIY]

What's your proposal for funding drug research?

Funded via NIH and public universities... in other words, exactly the way we fund it now.

The difference would be, the public (who already pays for the research) would be the direct beneficiaries of the research, instead of pharmaceutical companies getting to claim a monopoly on what should, by all law and rights, be public domain.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[ZeroSumHappiness]

You're under the impression that the private pharmaceuticals do nothing by way of funding the drug discovery process?

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[TheGratefulNet]

pharma is TOO IMPORTANT to be left to money-grubbing capitalists. its like infrastructure, it should be maintained by the gov who will be a little less of a pain-in-the-ass than the pharma companies.

we have the gov do things that we rely on for common good. pharma should be one of them.

the idea of profiting from others' pain is so WRONG, I can't even get my head around why we allow such evil practices.

at some point, we should think about how we can convert this 'business' back into the charity and caring set of goals it was SUPPOSED to be in the first place.

a lot of things should have profit taken out of it.

profit is evil. more and more, I'm seeing how our 'money, at all cost!' civ is just entirely designed wrong.

"sorry, you have to suffer. our prices are more important than your pain relief"

unbelievable. I wish there was a hell; so that the pharma (and similar) ceo's could go to 'retire' when they die.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

This is exactly right.

The choice isn't between new expensive medicines and new cheap medicines.

It's between new expensive medicines and no new medicines at all.

If you slow technological development by eviscerating the profit motive (imagine the idiocy of applying it to computers, smart phones, and Internet tech 20 years ago), with medicine, people die who otherwise wouldn't.

20 or 50 years go by, and the tech lags further and further behind where it otherwise would be. This causes increased numbers of deaths who wouldn't otherwise die, like compounding interest.

Had the US been like Europe the past 70 years (and I'm not talking just medicine, but general business unfriendliness) then would the US's production (half of all new medicines) been like Europe's instead?

And you'd stand here in 2012. Happy with your 1980-level "free" medical tech?

If your ears burn over this, they should. You could already be killing people like a major war does. Had Europe spit out medicine like the US does during this time, maybe we'd have 2025 or 2035-level medical tech, and more lives would be saved by the millions each year.

You just can't shove these hypothetically saved lives in front of a camera, the way you can with lives lost due to an expensive medicine. But there's no comparison in the numbers, it's not even close.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[JonahsDad]

But US bullies the world and lets other citizens die because they're not American.

I disagree. First off, big pharma is fully willing to let plenty of Americans die (if they can't afford their medication). Big pharma is also fully willing to help plenty of non-Americans pay for the medication they need. It is much more money-related than citizenship related.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[Shompol]

The same pharma companies that spend over 50% of budget on marketing and advertising? Don't you think it is a little wasteful?
PS: No, I don't need to provide a link, google it.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[Shompol]

Big pharma is all about marketing crappy and expensive meds to people who don't need them: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080105140107.htm

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[ArsonSmith]

All drug production should come from large heard of antelope, or from a single chinchilla in a tutu.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[NatasRevol]

The problem/cost isn't making the drug, it's getting it to market/passing human tests.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[cdecoro]

the idea of profiting from others' pain is so WRONG, I can't even get my head around why we allow such evil practices

Profit from other people's pain? The pharmaceutical companies that make the drugs I take every day, Merck and Pfizer, are profiting from RELIEVING my once-substantial, and now nearly non-existant pain. I am thankful every day that we have companies committed to such "evil" practices.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[drinkypoo]

Let us also note that Big Pharma spends vastly more on advertising (at least in this country) than on R&D. The massive cost to bring a drug to market? Please. The cost to bring a new drug to market is significant, but pales compared to the amount spent advertising it, while the cost to bring a new form of an existing drug to market is roughly jack shit, because of FDA regulations which reduce testing for derivatives of existing molecules. You only have to do a short study to prove that it doesn't kill substantially more people than the last version. You don't have to prove that it is even as efficacious as the last version, either. Then you advertise the shit out of the new one while publicizing the faults of the old one (maybe even run an ad about it on the teevee for those who were harmed by the old drug) so that nobody wants it even though it's available cheaper because it's old enough to be generic.

Bringing a new drug to market is expensive because the laws say so, and who buys the laws? Yeah.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[drstevep]

And so many of these products are still extremely effective. Some, when you ignore biased studies, still more effective than the newer, patented meds that replace them.

Pharma pushes new meds over old ones because they are patented and more lucrative, not because they are better. (Yeah, a gross generalization, but true in many cases.) Pharma takes old meds about to expire, performs a minor tweak or a new study, and gets a new patent/patent extension on what is essentially the same medicine. No new development, just efficacity studies on the new use. I know someone who took viagra (effectively) (patented in 1996) for pulminary hypertension. $1500 a month (thank you big pharma). By the way, ED Viagra was due to expire in 2012, but with the "new" pulminary hypertension effect, the patent now expires in 2020. Who knows what use they'll find for it in 2019?

Here are some questions: WHY is it so expensive to bring a new drug to market? A lot is currently consumed in paperwork and trials. How effective are these trials? Can they be made more effective? If we reduced the trial set to half of what it is now, how much additional risk would there be? 5%? 10%? From a societal standpoint, would the added risk be offset by the impact of increased availability and improved general health? Would the risk of 100 additional deaths be offset by making a drug more available to 1000 additional people? Should cheaper/faster drugs be made available if people agree to limited liability on lawsuits (the Vioxx effect)?

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[PopeRatzo]

You're under the impression that the private pharmaceuticals do nothing by way of funding the drug discovery process?

Pretty much. The heavy lifting is done for them and the research they do is heavily subsidized by taxpayers.

And, their research is entirely in high-profit drugs that may or may not be important for human health.

Also, look at how often they get it wrong. Huge money spent researching a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory that is less effective than Ibuprofen (whose patent has expired) and happens to give you a heart attack.

I should disclose here that I am alive today pretty much only because I was involved in a drug trial in the 1990s due to a nasty type of lymphoma. I'm completely better, no recurrence in almost 16 years now. I really tried to find out the provenance behind the drug I was given: almost entirely funded publicly, and my care was given at a non-profit hospital.

I was born during a time when almost all medical care was done on a non-profit basis. People got paid, but you do get to be paid in a non-profit setting. Doctors lived really nice, upper-middle class lives. Best house on the block and that sort of thing. It all went haywire when the profit motive took over everything in medicine.

Oh, and the increase in life expectancy that has occurred during my lifetime happened mostly before the for-profits took over.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[Joce640k]

Yep. One of the reasons there's not much research into new antibiotics is that it's not very profitable. Big pharma wants to make pills that people need to take every day for the rest of their life, not pills that people take for eight days once a year or so.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[scorp1us]

Fundamental Patent Reform. For any patent to be granted a list of expenses in developing the patent is submitted. Then they have patent protection for 10x that in revenue. They will submit an annual report, and any kind of lying will have the patent revoked. The people who want to use the patent will verify the reports to find any falsification. For devices that integrate multiple patents they are allowed to be summed accordingly.

This way, there is still incentive to do the R&D, because you'll get multiples of your investment back. But the wold gets your patents potentially sooner. This not only fixes drug patents but software patents too, as most software patents would only costs thousands to develop and would get paid 10x back in a very short time.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[ZeroSumHappiness]

It's not necessarily wasteful if it grows the budget by more than it costs.

For example, let's say I have a small company and my non-marketing costs are $10k a year (example numbers here.) Furthermore, let's say it'll cost me that $10k a year no matter whether I sell nothing or sell 100 units. (Actual pill-by-pill production is cheap. Setting up the factory is expensive. Getting a drug approved is expensive. Finding a drug to get approved is expensive.)

If I spend $2k in marketing maybe I can sell $8k in product, providing the drug to 80 people a year. Okay, sure, not terrible.
Maybe if I spend $4k in marketing I sell $10k in product, providing for 100 people.
Maybe if I spend $10k I sell $20k in product, proving for 200 people.

Is that $10k in marketing "a waste"? Well, if I spent half as much I'd make less profit. If I spent half as much I'd help fewer people. If I spent half as much I'd have less profit to put into creating new drug lines.

I understand where you're coming from, the idea that marketing is a drain on the economy since it produces nothing, but for an individual company it could be the difference between new drugs being developed or the company going bust.

I think what you're actually proposing is a pure collectivization of drug discovery. The problem I see with that is how do we then ensure we culture the right drugs? Drug discovery is hard. Immensely hard. Failures are often and expensive and government is poorly equipped to make entrepreneurial decisions. That's why we currently rely on private companies to make the decisions on who is a good research and who is a bad researcher when a company in total only makes two or three really profitable drugs every decade. We can allow those companies to fail if they can no longer produce. It's a lot harder to let a government program "fail" like that.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[bfandreas]

Wow, thank you. I didn't know this one.
It's a really humbling day when somebody from the fashion industry has to explain the tech and media world why copyright doesn't actually achieve what it was supposed to achieve.
Patents at least don't last forever. But they are very very silly at the moment as evidenced by the stupid little rent seeking lawsuits by Apple.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[ozmanjusri]

It's not necessarily wasteful if it grows the budget by more than it costs.

For healthcare, yes it is.

Think about it.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[ZeroSumHappiness]

So you're saying that if we dissolved every last pharma company today new drugs would come to market exactly as they are now with no other changes to the infrastructure?

That's what I'm getting at -- I know that NIH does basic biology research and I know that pharmaceuticals often get things wrong -- but they do provide a part in the system. Unless you have a plan to /replace/ them, you don't have a plan.

I think the government is great at basic research. I think it's absolute shite at creating a product out of that basic research. I think private organizations are better suited to that step in the process.

Maybe all we need to do is only provide the basic research information to actual non-profits, encouraging our pharma companies to become non-profits. Maybe we'll find that that's still untenable though. But to assume that they can only possibly be a drain on the system is to put ideology above logic.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[Midnight Thunder]

The same pharma companies that spend over 50% of budget on marketing and advertising? Don't you think it is a little wasteful?

PS: No, I don't need to provide a link, google it.

Your response would have been better if you had provided a link yourself. Anyhow, here is one link (PDF), entitled 'Pharmaceutical Marketing – Time for Change':

http://ejbo.jyu.fi/pdf/ejbo_vol9_no2_pages_4-11.pdf

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[Dr_Barnowl]

What if they could make a pill that cured the source of your pain, relieving you of both your pain AND your financial burden to pay them?

Do you think they would?

Or do you think they'd quietly keep supplying you your painkiller for 17 years, until the patent expired, and then try and sell you a new one developed solely because they can't make the same margin on the old one, now that any chemist worth a damn can legally make it for a few cents per pill?

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[getto man d]

Right, because more government control = less evil and well maintained. Just look at the US's current infrastructure and areas of oversight (e.g. the FCC).

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[Dishevel]

WTF?
Drug company advertising is also a waste of money for iron workers.
Did you look at the post you were replying to at all?
Healthcare will not keep a bankrupt company going.
The marketing is not a waste if it makes the company more in increased sales than what is spent.
I understand that ideas like profit and corporation are evil and scary ideas to you but they do exist.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[ZeroSumHappiness]

Unless it advises a potential patient to a more effective treatment that leaves him alive instead of dead at the end.

If I never hear about Lipitor maybe I never bother getting a cholesterol screening and then die of heart disease at 37 instead of going to my doctor at 35 and saying, "Hey, I heard about this Lipitor thing and that men from age 35 should have cholesterol screenings."

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[us7892]

>> we have the gov do things that we rely on for common good. pharma should be one of them.

Yikes. You can't be serious.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[ZeroSumHappiness]

+1 Insightful. You're the only responder to my massive Devil's advocating that I can't find any glaring errors with. I guess I should watch that TED talk!

It does have the one problem that you should stretch out the approval process to rack up more costs for drugs you think are definitely going to be blockbusters. Even just adding time to the process adds salary costs and doing that would keep it out of patients' hands longer, potentially costing lives. But that's not a very likely situation, I don't think.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[mjm1231]

Well, I'd naively like to hope that if there were only 80 people for whom this drug were the best treatment, that 80 patients would have it prescribed. And if there were 200 patients for whom it were best, you'd have 200 customers. And so on. If I discovered that my doctor was prescribing my medications based on marketing rather than what's best for me, I'd switch doctors.

The only purpose of advertising is to increase demand, which in the case of health care should be purely driven by need. What seems worse to me is that the most heavily advertised drugs are those which are still under patent, and therefore the pharmaceutical company is the sole supplier. Since supply is already controlled, I can only assume the drug companies intend the advertising to result in higher prices.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[Marc Madness]

Drug discovery is hard. Immensely hard. Failures are often and expensive and government is poorly equipped to make entrepreneurial decisions. That's why we currently rely on private companies to make the decisions on who is a good research and who is a bad researcher when a company in total only makes two or three really profitable drugs every decade. We can allow those companies to fail if they can no longer produce. It's a lot harder to let a government program "fail" like that.

I don't think the fact that the private sector is better equipped at making enterpreneurial decisions has been adequately proven by evidence (however, neither has the converse). One big problem with allowing private, for-profit, companies to be the decision makers in matters of public health has one major flaw: medications that yield high profits don't necessarily address real health problems (I'm thinking of Viagra and Cialis here), and medications that address real health problems will not necessarily yield high profits. The private sector has little interest in addressing health problems that are not profitable.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[mspohr]

Most big pharma research is on tweaking existing drugs just enough so they can get a new patent monopoly .

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course they would make that pill. They could, after all, price it however they wanted.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[ZeroSumHappiness]

Awareness is one of the functions of marketing. Doctors don't magically know every single drug ever everywhere; they're only human.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[Gilandune]

That actually sounds sane AND doable. what were you thinking!?

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[ZeroSumHappiness]

Most /successful/ research. Plenty of drug line attempts fail because, again, drug research is hard. Modifying existing drugs is more likely to succeed because it's much closer to a successful line. Then again, those tweaks rarely cover much more than their own costs anyway.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[mjm1231]

Seriously? I heard of cholesterol as a health problem long before Lipitor existed, and before direct to consumer drug advertising was even a thing.

If you are relying on advertising for your information about the world, I don't like your prospects for health and well being in any case.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[ZeroSumHappiness]

True, it hasn't been proven. There is, however, a huge correlation between free market enterprise and successful product innovation.

With respect to non-profitable drugs, the US actually gives tax breaks to companies that research non-profitable drugs. Maybe we just need to make those tax breaks higher to incentivize it more.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[I_am_Jack]

So you're saying that if we dissolved every last pharma company today new drugs would come to market exactly as they are now with no other changes to the infrastructure?

Actually, he wasn't saying that. He was saying that making profit the primary motivating force in pharmaceutical research turns it away from science and toward a more commoditized economic model. Jonas Salk refused to patent his polio vaccine. Medical and pharmaceutical research was done before to better lives and for the glory of science. Now it's being done to better the lives of people whose lives are already better (eg. Big Pharma executives and their lobbyists). A Cost-plus economic model would move us away from fairly pointless, high-side effect designer drugs and more toward a production-distribution model with a guaranteed and reasonable profit margin and leave pharmaceutical research to the scientists, not the marketing people.

It's also better for the economy, because less money spent on medication means more discretionary spending. Think about how GM wouldn't have needed a government bailout had most senior citizens been able to buy new Buicks and medication instead of medication only

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[gambino21]

Doctors don't need to know every drug everywhere. There is this thing called google where you can type in your symptoms and find out what drugs might be helpful. There are also reference books that a doctor could use to look up what are the appropriate medications for various problems. Or the primary care doctor could consult with a specialist if they are unsure about appropriate medications for a certain condition. I would much prefer my doctor determine the correct medication via a book or Internet search vs. a commercial.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[ZeroSumHappiness]

It's just an example, sheesh. Insert a less common sense ailment then. For example, without marketing I wouldn't know about the various smoking cessation products, including the nicotine vaccination.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[Bam_Thwok]

GlaxoSmithKline gave away half a billion dollars worth of chemotherapeutics to low-income American patients who couldn't afford it in 2010. Merck, Pfizer, Roche, and Wyeth have similar programs.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[CanHasDIY]

Right, because more government control = less evil and well maintained. Just look at the US's current infrastructure and areas of oversight (e.g. the FCC).

Yea, but you should have seen 'em when they were new, before the lobbyists and their pet congresspeople got ahold of them!


FWIW, our infrastructure isn't all that fucked up, it's just that it hasn't been maintained and/or expanded as necessary, mostly due to the aforementioned lobbyist/congresscritter carnal relationship.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[Anonymous Coward]

Had the US been like Europe the past 70 years (and I'm not talking just medicine, but general business unfriendliness) then would the US's production (half of all new medicines) been like Europe's instead?

You do know that many of the world's largest drug companies are European, right? And presumably, of the half of drugs that weren't developed in the US, most were developed in Europe.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[kilfarsnar]

I don't think it's quite so black-and-white. Sure, the profit motive gives us new tech. But there is a question of allocation of resources and which problems are addressed. Others have pointed out that the profit motive also gives the drug companies an incentive to manage illness rather than cure it. It also reduces incentive to create drugs that would help a lot of people, but not make much money (vaccines and antibiotics as a couple of examples).

The problem with the profit motive is right there in the name: profit. The motivation is not to make new drugs to help people. It is not to look at where the need is most dire and address it. The motivation is to make money. The benefit to society is a side effect, and will be ignored if the primary motivation is put in jeopardy. This is why the profit motive is fine for relatively unimportant stuff like toasters and cars and video games. But really important stuff that affects people's lives perhaps should not be left to the whims of self-interest.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[fractalus]

Surely there are more targeted ways to advertise to doctors than on national TV during prime time. Those ads aren't for doctors, they're to increase demand among the general population, who can pressure their doctors into prescribing things whether it's in the patient's best medical interest or not.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[evilRhino]

That's why we currently rely on private companies to make the decisions on who is a good research and who is a bad researcher when a company in total only makes two or three really profitable drugs every decade.

This is historically false. Oncology is currently the biggest money maker for the pharmaceutical industry, but the field didn't exist before the government established the NCI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_cancer_institute

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[Bam_Thwok]

I've seen papers that estimate it costs between $500 million and $2000 million to get a new drug approved in the US, and it takes 10-15 years to complete the process, after which there's not much time left to recoup before the patent expires. So yeah, they market the hell out of everything they make, particularly when a competitors have a similar drug in the pipeline.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[RogerWilco]

I don't agree that in general Europe is business unfriendly. The US has two other major advantages over Europe, namely a large common market and a head start after WWII.

EU-27 has a bigger economy and more Fortune 500 companies than the US.

Europe certainly has problems for business, but those are mostly the fact that there are many languages, currencies and different laws to deal with, not that the climate is inherently business unfriendly. Some countries might be somewhat more unfriendly towards US companies than their own, but that's mutual.

And we manage this wile providing universal health care, guaranteed pensions, social welfare, more holidays and shorter working hours.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[ZeroSumHappiness]

I'm going to assume that the NCI does basic research and private companies bring those potential drugs to market? Yep, looks to be the case.

I'm not saying that the NIH and other government programs shouldn't be doing basic research, just that in our current system pharma companies have a role in bringing those discoveries to market.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[ZeroSumHappiness]

Yes, it does try to drum up market share for some company's drug. It also informs the patient that he should be asking about X. I don't think it's the best possible system either, but I don't think it has zero or negative value.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[SlovakWakko]

When you take the profit away, what will be the motivation to try and create new drugs? Man, you mean well, but you are sooo wrong. I totally get you, the fact that some (well, most) people are willing to take the money from those who suffer is just sad, but I've witnessed socialism (just what you propose) first-hand, and it does not work.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[ZeroSumHappiness]

Drug commercials became legal and popular before Google was. They also come to market sooner than reference material. Not all PCPs will have direct connections to all possible specialists or even realize off the bat that some set of symptoms is likely connected to some specialty. Maybe direct marketing has run its course now that things like Watson are coming online, but historically, doctors need more information than what they used to have.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[JaredOfEuropa]

Food is even more important, and we have EVIL farmers and grocers who PROFIT *insert disgusted expression* from our hunger. If we don't pay these guys their blood money, we die. How more wrong can it get?

Oh wait. The market takes care of food just fine. And it can take care of medicine and health care. There are plenty of things wrong with the pharma industry, and the government can play a stronger role there when it comes to regulations and oversight, but I cringe when I read sweeping statements like "pharma is too important to be left to capitalists". Sadly, that statement is now bon ton amongst some of our politicians (in NL); they are repeating it verbatim. By the same token, I could claim that "pharma is too importent to be messed up by bureaucrats". But I won't. Government and private industry both have their roles to play.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[xeoron]

How about shifting 90% of the military budget and off the book war spending to drug and health care investment?

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[tom17]

And on that note, a relative of mine is on AD's. Just so happens that now she is over the worst of it and she wants to wean off, that the pharma that created this drug does not provide a reasonable way to wean off (like reduced dose pills). Instead, you resort to cutting them up (Which they say should not be done).

Basically, they don't *want* you to get better and get off of their drug.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[FictionPimp]

At the very least I think all things discovered at public universities using public funds should be public domain.

Is it too much to ask that I get access to the things I pay for?

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[russotto]

By the way, ED Viagra was due to expire in 2012, but with the "new" pulminary hypertension effect, the patent now expires in 2020. Who knows what use they'll find for it in 2019?

It's the other way around; the pulmonary hypertension effect was first -- and the patent still expires this year, so generic sildenafil citrate should be available before the expiration of the patent on using it to treat ED.

I think patenting the use of an existing drug is total bullshit -- it turns doctors making off-label prescriptions of generic sildenafil citrate for ED into patent violators, which is absurd. But much about the patent system is absurd.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[ubergeek65536]

You're making the assumption that the ONLY reason for developing drugs is profit. There's no evidence that research funded by public money is less effective than research funded by corporate coffers.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[ZeroSumHappiness]

Ah, so I'm required to be an MD who is specialized in all things seen and unseen in order to deserve to live. Nice to know.

Seriously though, I can't possibly think of all the possible ways in which I could die and act on them. I need some way of narrowing it down for me. Drug ads give /some/ information -- I don't think it should be the only and it doesn't need to be the primary source, but they're not entirely, 100% without value.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[FictionPimp]

I never see cures advertised. Only maintenance drugs. I hope I'm wrong, but it seems like drug companies don't want cures, they want dugs that mask symptoms that you need to take for the rest of your life.

Is it better to cure aids or to let someone live on a daily pill with aids?

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[Nadaka]

You don't understand.

There are a fixed number of people who need a drug for their health problems.

Giving a drug to someone who does not need it is malpractice.

Advertising drugs does not really increase your legally and ethically available customer base.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[the_humeister]

Please tell me what mythical disease this is that causes pain but can be cured with a pill?

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[nedlohs]

No, if spending on marketing generates more revenue than spending on R&D then of course they should be doing that. And in an industry with high fixed costs and low variable costs you should expect marketing to get more funding - that's simple math.

Of course a significant portion of that evil marketing and advertising budget is actually subsidizing medication costs for poor people (which shouldn't be necessary of course, but the US health system is broken):

Free samples given to physicians totaled $6.6 billion of retail value, representing 51.9 percent of the drug promotion expenditures.

- http://med.stanford.edu/news_releases/2003/may/Pharmaceutical.html

I certainly was given samples by a doctor back when I had no job and no medical insurance. I seriously doubt I was in a unique position, or that doctors could find many other uses for such samples.

Note, given that the marginal cost of creating a unit of product is a fraction of the retail value a unit of product (fixed and variable costs again) there's likely some tax advantages to such spending (I'm not an accountant and hence I could be wrong of course) in which case you would expect a high spend in that area and reducing spending in that area wouldn't increase spending in other areas which do not have a tax incentive.

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[Applekid]

If I never hear about Lipitor maybe I never bother getting a cholesterol screening and then die of heart disease at 37 instead of going to my doctor at 35 and saying, "Hey, I heard about this Lipitor thing and that men from age 35 should have cholesterol screenings."

One should go to the doctor yearly. This is a healthy habit, right up there with brushing your teeth and exercise and cooking food thoroughly.

The only point of marketing to the mass public is to make them think they want something. They want someone who's feeling a little down today see a commercial for an anti-depressant and say "hey, *I* am feeling down, maybe I'm clinically depressed, clearly I need this pill." They should only be marketing to doctors, and even then it shouldn't be by giving away swag and lunches to a doctor and their staff, it should be a just-the-facts operation. This medication treats xyz better than this other one, just look at these reduced side effects.

What I'm getting at is that you're doctor should already be running the blood work and should be bringing up your cholesterol levels up to you. That's why they're licensed: they are acting as your agents regarding health.

That's why sensible countries prohibit the drug industry from advertising.

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[Nadaka]

That is why its ok for drug companies to advertise in medical journals. But why advertise on television to consumers?

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[ZeroSumHappiness]

Nope. That's an entirely reasonable change to the system, but that gets us to underlying chemical being unpatentable but what about the delivery mechanism?

Also, in that case, who tests efficacy and safety of the underlying chemical and how do they do that without a delivery mechanism?

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[FictionPimp]

Didn't IBM build a super compter to help diagnose patients? Seems trivial to develop a search for drugs based on patient illness, test results, and list of known history and medication.

Lists of results could be compiled as 'likes' and 'dislikes' and then using crowd sourced (but anonymous) data we could find better results for patients. My netflix que is pretty damn good at reading my mind, why can't I have netmeds to help my doctor find meds suited for me based on what has worked for me in the past and what has worked for people similar to me?

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[cdecoro]

AC is absolutely right. Of course someone would make that pill, because it would completely wipe out all their competitors' market share, assuming that the price of that pill was less than the present value (including inconvenience) of taking the other pills over the length of the patent term.

And I'm not forced to buy their new pills; their old (no-longer-patented) ones work just fine for me. But they don't work well enough for some people, whereas the new ones may. So I'm quite happy to have given them their monopoly-inflated price (about $100/month) for the 3 years I was on it until the patent expired, because they've turned that around into making new drugs that help other people. More importantly, I appreciate that they've given me my life back, and hope for the future. For that, $100/month was a bargain.

Now, I don't deny that there can be problems where companies, or individuals therein, take actions that are fraudulent, exploitative or otherwise unethical. So of course, there should be some level of government oversight. But profit is exactly what motivates these companies to make new drugs. If a disease only affects a small number of people (as opposed to, perhaps, a wide-spread pandemic), governments don't have much motivation to produce drugs.

Suppose that you were a politician proposing to spend billions of dollars towards developing a drug for, let's say, those with schizophrenia, which are less than half a percent of the population. The drug may never pan out. And your opponent says that we should just throw those psychos in institutions, if not in prison (because we all know that that's really what they "deserve," and that their illness is just an "excuse") and spend that money on decent people instead. Which do you think would be more popular, and thus more likely to be implemented by a government? (Hint: one of these is exactly what has been done by governments for most of human history, and the other has never been done, at least on any large scale).

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[ewieling]

Right, because more government control = less evil and well maintained. Just look at the US's current infrastructure and areas of oversight (e.g. the FCC).

When I imagine a world with out the FCC I see a world where the radio spectrum is a wild west of interference and people cranking up their transmitters to drown out my transmitter.

The government, especially the federal government, *should* be there to promote the Common Good. The FCC, FDA, EPA, NIH, and many other government agencies do just that. Yes, they have their problems. We should work to fix these problems not work to abolish the agencies.

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[Ironhandx]

Whatever you may think, government is the only large organization that is even a little bit likely to do things for the common good.

Everything else is profit at all costs. The idea that the "Free Market" or some other voodoo can sort it out is a bullshit story told by the same people with a shitload of money who benefit more from less government to protect the people they are exploiting.

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[the_humeister]

The problem is that only a small minority of diseases actually have a cure, and these cures usually against bacterial/fungal agents and are dependent upon a working immune system.

If you get a viral disease, the only remedy is to wait it out or go on maintenance therapy. For example:
cold virus - wait it out
flu - wait it out
varicella - wait it out
HIV - maintenance therapy

If you have cancer, you're almost certainly never going to be "cured" unless you have something small and benign like a basal cell carcinoma. Breast cancer? If you take out the lesion with negative nodes, you're still not necessarily cured - you just have a better chance of disease-free survival.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[nedlohs]

Jonas Salk refused to patent his polio vaccine

And yet he patented Remune.

And of course his "refusal" to patent his polio vaccine had nothing to do with the lawyers at the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis saying that prior art made it not patentable - they did the legal research into that just for fun with no intention of actually patenting it if it was likely to succeed.

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[FictionPimp]

If private companies want to come up with that, I'm ok with a patent on that part. I'd liken it to taking some MIT or BSD licensed source code and putting it into a commercial product. Anyone else can do the leg work, but I get my money by either doing it better, being first to market, being more cost effective, or all of the above. Those patents however should not be extendable just because you find a new illness the drug treats, or find that you can take two pills a person used to take together anyway and make it one big pill and suddenly get a brand new patent.

Now if the public money is used for that delivery mechanism, then it's public.

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[CanHasDIY]

Ah, so I'm required to be an MD who is specialized in all things seen and unseen in order to deserve to live. Nice to know.

Don't be silly; being smart enough to get medical advice from a medical professional, as opposed to an advertisement, is a basic use of common sense. I never said or implied that one had to be a medical expert themselves (nice try w/ the hyperbole, a bit over the top tho).

Seriously though, I can't possibly think of all the possible ways in which I could die and act on them.

So? What's that have to do with trusting a sales pitch as if it were valuable medical advice?

I need some way of narrowing it down for me.

Then talk to a doctor, not a damn pharma salesman! You wouldn't take engine repair advice from a used car salesman, would you (FYI, the correct answer is 'an emphatic NO')? So why trust a drug salesman when it comes to life or death decisions?

I don't think it should be the only and it doesn't need to be the primary source, but they're not entirely, 100% without value.

The majority of drug adverts I see these days spend about 10 seconds telling you why you should take it (normally to alleviate symptoms of erectile dysfunction), and the next 50 seconds listing the reasons you shouldn't. So yea, I suppose there is value in letting people know how much worse the drug will make their life than the disease it's meant to 'treat' does.

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[nedlohs]

Food production is far more important than pharma. Those evil farmers profiting from others' hunger is so WRONG. Not to mention those evil super markets profiting from simple arbitrage on food. Quick nationalize all food production and distribution - worked well for Zimbabwe after all.

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[Ironhandx]

Most of these programs are forced on them by the Medicare program so that they can get paid for the other drugs that get paid for through medicare. Just FYI.

When a large, known-to-be-evil corporation does something that makes it look less-evil, look for the evil lining. Its probably there somewhere.

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[Anonymous Coward]

This is such a dumb argument. You think the scientists who invent the cure would keep their mouths shut about it?

People who think we developed a cure for AIDS but Big Pharma is sitting on it to maintain profits are so ridiculous. Do you think the team of scientists who invent that would keep shut and give up their Nobel Prize, millions of dollars in speaking fees, tenured positions at top medical schools or chemistry departments, etc.? Do you think the executives at GSK would let their AIDS-infected relatives die just to help their stock perform better?

Our government can't keep their mouths shut about anything. You think Big Pharma could do a better job?

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[Bam_Thwok]

Yes, and they value their charitable patient assistance at the most favorable possible retail price to inflate the number. Pharma's gonna pharma, and all that. Strong-armed by the g-men or not, they give away life-saving medication to a large number of people in desperate need, which is the opposite of what JonahsDad suggested. They may be perfectly willing to let silver foxes go without their boner medication if they can't afford it, but I work in oncology research and very rarely have I heard of a patient not being able to get their chemo if they have financial hardships due to these manufacturer and other third-party programs.

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[drunken_boxer777]

I see this objection a lot. As someone with quite a bit of knowledge about the pharmaceutical industry, medicine, and basic research in biology, let me try to explain the problem: creating a cure is insanely difficult. Why?
      1. It usually requires permanently altering cellular anatomy or physiology/metabolism, and homeostasis won't let you.
      2. Many diseases have genetic components, which would require altering DNA to cure.
      3. We don't have the technology to carry out #1 and 2.

In a disease state, the body's homeostasis has diverged from a "normal" state. Homeostasis is a robust process, meaning that it can take a lot to change it; usually it occurs slowly over a long period of time. Taking a pill that temporarily alters that homeostasis doesn't reset it to normal. Think freshman chemistry: equilibrium and Le Chatelier's principle. You changed the equilibrium, and the disease state homeostasis fights to go back to what it was.

As for genetic components, cystic fibrosis should be the easiest disease in the world to cure: it's caused by having two copies of a bad allele for a potassium channel that result in misfolded proteins. Insert at least one good copy into the genome and voila! A cure! Yet nobody has ever demonstrated success with gene therapy in humans. Which leads us to the third point...

We just can't figure out how to get gene therapy to work well. We also can't figure out how to permanently move a diseased homeostatic process (e.g., insulin resistance) to a normal state.

It's not that the pharma companies don't want to. Patient compliance with medication is horrible. If you tell a patient to their face that they will only live 3 more years if they don't take this pill every day, versus 10 years if they do, the average patient will only take the pill about 180 days of the year. So, if a drug company could sell a cure at the same cost as a lifetime of one-a-day pills (which they could), then they would absolutely do so. It's guaranteed money, like a magazine subscription versus buying a copy off the rack whenever.

Besides, many scientists at academic and government research institutions would rather find cures for diseases, yet are unable to. Unless we pull out the tin foil hats and speculate that they, too, are on the payroll of the pharma companies, it should be clearer that there are other reasons cures don't happen.

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[Shompol]

informs the patient that he should be asking about X

Go ahead and kill yourself swallowing expensive, poorly tested, patented drugs, when a cheap generic is available and it is proven to have no side effects. Guess what, nobody "informs the patient" about generics, because patented stuff brings them the most money. You can forget about traditional medicine and treatments that don't involve drugs, those are a big no-no in the modern medicine.

And this is not just a problem for idiots who watch drug commercials on TV (sorry), but the doctors get pressured into prescribing new untested expensive stuff, so one has to be very careful even when taking doctor's advice these days.

And then some people up the thread go ahead and start defending "poor underfunded drug cartels" because they "need money for research". No, they spend that money for shoving their expensive crap down our throats, not research.

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[drunken_boxer777]

Good points. However, the vast majority of revenue from pharmaceutical sales comes from the US. Regardless of whether you think it is good or bad that these companies price very differently depending on the market and lobby to prevent drug importation, the fact is that if the US didn't pay more for drugs then drug development would certainly lag where it stands today, as the R&D budgets would necessarily be smaller. (If I recall, the US, less than 5% of the world population, provides about half of all revenue to pharma companies, with the other 95% of the world population providing the other half.)

The corollary is that if EU governments didn't exercise control over drug prices, those companies would have larger R&D budgets.

Do not infer that I am anti-EU or pro-pharma. I am just trying to clarify the GP's post with regard to how the business and healthcare environments in EU countries theoretically could have slowed progress in pharamceuticals.

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[kelemvor4]

Thanks for the link. Who would have thought a ted talk about something as mundane as fashion would be interesting. I didn't, but she made a good point.

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[Ironhandx]

For Europe you would be correct, but for 30 years or so prior to Prime Dictator Stephen Harper stealing power, Canada was spending nearly double per capita on health care research as the US.

BTW thats a literal stealing of power. He literally rigged the voting system with live and robo-calls telling known liberal supporters to go to voting stations that were not for their areas, where they then could not vote, and he won his Majority by a few thousand votes, the robo calls and live calls accounted for nearly five times the amount he won by.

Also, he LOST the popular vote. By a lot. Lowest popular vote Prime Minister in history. The former official opposition leader(the now-deceased Jack Layton) beat him by like 12 points on the popular vote.

How he is still in power I have no fucking idea, he should be strung up and shot, If the Queen of England or someone who knows the Queen at least(the chances she reads slashdot are probably nil) reads this, there are still laws on the books that allow you to dissolve the government and for the love of god, we need you now. Mr. Harper and his entire cabinet need to be barred from ever running for office again in Canada and every law written into the books since their stealing of power needs to be undone.

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[Tough Love]

Tax marijuana.

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[Khashishi]

Please don't confuse wasteful business practice with wasteful societal practice.

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[Khashishi]

But, _so many things_ are TOO IMPORTANT to be left to capitalists. Banks, prisons, utilities, schools. Where do you draw the line?

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[LynnwoodRooster]

Medicare/Medicaid are already the largest portion of the Federal budget, eclipsing the entire DOD budget (including war costs - which are, actually, on-book).

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[Khashishi]

What about when the pills are $1000/month (not so unusual)?

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[tolkienfan]

If your netflix screws up you don't die as a result.

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[LynnwoodRooster]

And national budgets that are, on average, worse than the US. Not that the US is a shining example of success, but one needs look no further than Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, or France to see imminent (or current) collapse.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[englishknnigits]

Definitely agree on the first two points. I'm not sure how you can say it is the US's fault if people in other countries die because the US doesn't give people in other countries free stuff. I suppose then it is also the US's fault when someone doesn't have a house, doesn't have food, or doesn't have medical care because the US didn't build everyone in the world a house, give everyone in the world food, and give everyone in the world medical care. You can rightly blame the US for many things, this is not one of them.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[meerling]

You should really look into it, you'd be amazed how much of it is paid for by the government, not the corporations that claim patents on it.

For that matter, you might choke if you look back in time to when the DoJ went after Microsoft, if you looked at what the anticompetitive actions the drug companies were doing. There's a reasons your 'generics' are 400+% more expensive now.

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[CodeHxr]

Unless it advises a potential patient to a more effective treatment that leaves him alive instead of dead at the end.

If I never hear about Lipitor maybe I never bother getting a cholesterol screening and then die of heart disease at 37 instead of going to my doctor at 35 and saying, "Hey, I heard about this Lipitor thing and that men from age 35 should have cholesterol screenings."

Should it not be the physician's responsibility to notify their patients of such things? I don't expect people that call me for tech support to know that they should do this or that, so why should my physician rely on me to tell him which drugs I need?

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[datavirtue]

At age 30 my doctor told me I was pre-hypertensive (borderline hypertensive) I asked him what the solution was. He said pill. I said how long do I have to take it. He said "the rest of your life." I said, no thank you, I'll cut the salt and caffeine instead. I made diet changes, blood pressure dropped, no pills. WA-A-AY cheaper, and much less side-effects. He didn't suggest diet changes though. It seems like you have to pull teeth to get nutrition advice from doctors. I've had trouble on several of the very few occasions where I have visited the doctor.

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[CodeHxr]

Haven't you seen Johnny Mnemonic?

Treating the disease is far more profitable than curing it.

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[trout007]

Profit is extremely important in an economy. It's sends a signal that there is a bit untapped demand that is not being met. You can only make a huge profit when there are few or no competitors. In a free economy people will notice those fat profits and want in on the game. They will undercut your prices and make production more efficient to get a hold of those profits.

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[datavirtue]

You are confusing advertising and marketing. Advertising is an aspect of marketing. Most of marketing is determining who your customers are, the customer's needs (segment), and where they are (place).

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[FictionPimp]

That's what the doctor is for, to vet the machine.

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[Cyberax]

Right now 75% of new drugs come from pharma companies.

And yes, if we look at TOTALLY new drugs (not just tweaks of old drugs) the situation remains exactly the same.

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[Shazback]

I know this might not go down well with some /.ers, but really, this talk is laughable. Name three innovations fashion has brought in the past half century. Try it. Is a new cut an "innovation"? Not more than the various Thermaltake cases are "innovations" in the computing industry. Is a new colour an "innovation"? Possibly, but only if it's genuinely new, and I fear that's not something that's happened often in the past 50 years.

Computing, Automobile, Aerospace... These are sectors with high copyright protection. Car-makers guard their motor secrets jealously, as well as all kind of information about the electronics within their cars. Aerospace has only a few companies that have survived, but they make damn sure they protect every tiny thing they invent so as to gain a competitive advantage (this is often doubled by the "nationalist" side of military aerospace, which means many things are "national secrets" and therefore protected even more strongly than patents or copyrights would). Computing in fifty years has gone from a rare thing companies had in large rooms to ubiquitous tools every person uses multiple times a day, often without even noticing it.

The fact she talks about car designs is the real give-away. She's not talking about innovation at all. She's talking about the appearance of innovation. Changing a car's exterior design is perhaps slightly "innovative" (aerodynamics, etc.), but by and large it's the same process used in the previous generations of cars, tweaked to the current fashion, the latest design requirements the brand/law has set up, and other minor considerations.

Changing a car from red to blue isn't innovation. Changing it from running on petrol to hydrogen fuel cells is. "Copy-ability" encourages the first. Copyrights are intended to encourage the latter.

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[datavirtue]

Yeah, there are tons of anti-psychotics prescribed when most people just need a cheap harmless dose of lithium. A simple metal salt that costs a few cents.

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[sirlark]

Your arguments assumes that drugs are elastic goods, and that 'providing' for a person implies that is a good thing and they need the drug. Health products are not elastic goods; People will pay for them at whatever price they can afford when they need them. There is no point (from the consumer's point of view) in marketing a drug because if a person needs a drug, it will be prescribed to them. If a person doesn't need a drug, why should they be encouraged to buy it. Obviously some drugs (vitamins, viagra, smart drugs, narcotics) are elastic goods, in that they are not necessary, but are pleasant to use. Viagra is a good example here. It made pfizer a ton of money, and there's nothing wrong with that. Any public monet spent researching the drug was for health cocerns completely unrelated to the eventual use of the drug. Pfizer saw an opportunity and ran with it. That's a good example of how pharmaceutical companies can and should make money, and be allowed to patent their products. But when the research that goes intoa product is publically funded and the product developed leads directly out of that research, then no pharmaceuticals shouldn't get to patent. The funding government should get the patent and license it to pharmaceutical companies. There's nothing wrong with a big pharma company that helped in the research licensing the patent exclusively for say 5 years, but the government still gets a cut, which should then be fed back into research, or used to subsidize costs if the drug is expensive or ... or ... or. There are plenty of ways to make this work for the taxpayers.

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[datavirtue]

Whoa now, Viagra does address a real problem! What if you were so fat you couldn't get it up anymore!? Viagra could be a real benefit then. You suck!

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[jedidiah]

Except you aren't qualified to buy the product. The law has determined that you can't be trusted to fend for yourself. So trying to advertise you is entirely inappropriate.

The best you can do is saturate the actual experts with a lot of nonsense and propaganda.

Plus Lipitor is a stupid example. You're better off making lifestyle changes and not polluting your body if "the numbers" don't look right despite.

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[tolkienfan]

Then the doctor has to understand how the algorithm arrived at its conclusion.
Unfortunately, the algorithms used by netflix and Amazon et al don't actually have any understanding of the causes - merely correlations in the data - so they are unable.

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[datavirtue]

money-grubbing capitalists

You uneducated fuck. There is no viable argument against capitalism as the good far outweighs any of the, more news worthy, bad.

It is not like infrastructure at all. What corporations are taking care of infrastructure for us? How many are independently researching and manufacturing drugs? I'm not fan-boy'ing for pharma, I'm just saying your diarrhea of the brain needs some remedy. If you are going to rant on something at least come to the keyboard with a half-stable argument.

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[tragedy]

They also come to market sooner than reference material.

So you're saying the drug companies start advertising before their research has been published? Something seems a bit wrong with that. If you're just talking about brick-thick pharmaceutical catalogs being sent round, aren't we living in the 21st century? Even without computers, hasn't it been possible to send around updates even for paper catalogs for as long as we've had paper catalogs?

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[jedidiah]

Profit motive gets you paper diapers, HFCS, and drugs that have cascading side effects. It gets you Walmart and Pringles. It optimizes for profit rather than quality.

It's directly at odds with any notion of the public good.

This is especially true when you have far too many people (like you) repeating the "Greed is Good" mantra.

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[datavirtue]

There are some priced at $30000+ per month for cystic fibrosis. A disease which usually renders the sufferer poverty stricken. Not to mention the other drugs that those with CF have to take which cost thousands per month. The state foots the bill. Well, except for the $30000 per month one.

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[hey!]

While I agree with the spirit of your comment, it may not be strictly correct because between "need to stay alive" and "don't need at all" there are varying levels of need, as in "probably would benefit from," or "might possibly benefit from," or even "definitely would benefit from but to a marginal degree."

Suppose you have moderately elevated blood pressure. Do you need to take medication for that? Well it depends. How elevated? What is your family history of cardiovascular disease? Your age? Have you attempted other interventions without success? It's not necessarily cut-and-dried. This is more the case when you talk about psychiatric medications (Ritalin), or quality of life medications (Viagra).

There may be many people who could benefit from a drug who aren't in a life-and-death need situation and haven't considered taking it. The problem with putting the pharmaceutical companies in charge of this is that they aren't disinterested parties. They can't be trusted to to give objective, impartial advice, even when they are acting in good faith.

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[JBHarris]

I say let the drug companies advertise all they want, buy the doctors whatever swag they want, and buy them all the vacations they want, but there needs to be oversight to make sure those expenditures do not influence the doctor's diagnosis or treatment in any way. I want the pharmaceutical companies to have freedom of speech like every other company in the country (excepting tobacco and a tiny few others), but when it comes to the actual prescribing of the drugs, that needs to come down to cold-hard facts on efficacy and side-effects. It wouldn't take long with serious oversight for the doctors that are gaming the system to get caught prescribing anti-depressants to house-wives to stay skinny (welbutrin), or viagra to frat-boys. Once that problem is taken care of, the swag and fancy vacations won't have any utility, and the pharmaceutical companies will see the value approach 0, and will stop. Regardless of where you come down on free-speech, the pill-mill issue needs to be resolved for this to work.

Brad

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[Lorien_the_first_one]

I make the assumption that if I see something advertised on TV, especially food or drugs, I don't need it. As to whether or not patent protection will improve health, I would rather have 100 companies developing health care products, including pharma, than one big company with all the patents. Take away the patents, and then suddenly, everyone is copying each other, making improvements, racing to be the first to market.

We might even save money if the government paid for all the testing and we took away the patents. Then once a drug has been tested and found to work, it's just a matter of certification for the producers. That would place the emphasis on production, not rent seeking.

Patents infringe on life whereas life copies any idea and improves upon the idea AT WILL.

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[LeadSongDog]

These slimeballs write down those "free" samples at retail price (not at their incremental cost of production) as a business expense. They probably use nearly-staledated inventory to boot. Of course they are never free (libre) products that they promote, just free (beer) samples of their highest-profit lines. In the process, they rationalize compromising patient, pharmacist and doctor integrity and privacy. Pharmacy chains have been caught selling the compiled prescribing histories of doctors to the drugmakers in order to allow them to more accurately target their sample allocations and other marketing-to-prescribers. Just consider what this means for the privacy of people with rare conditions in remote places. All of this has just one purpose: to pad the apparent "justifiable" cost of a product with in many cases little or no additional value to the patient compared to a generic alternative. Notice how remarkably few drug trials are compared against existing gold-standard treatments and how few actually report their underwhelming results. The vast majority compare only against placebo. http://clinicaltrials.gov/ It's long past time that the profit motive was applied to delivering better care rather than the sale of more pills. The elimination of "evergreening" would go a long way toward this.

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[Lorien_the_first_one]

Drug companies advertise on the evening news to the 90-percent'ers. They're the people who take Tylenol, Tums, Advil or (take your pick here), every day, as if they were vitamins. Those same people consume 90% of production. You've noticed the rent-seeking, too?

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[tchuladdiass]

I think that is mainly to raise public awareness that there is a treatment for the condition that they are experiencing (or don't know that they have), and it gets them to actually go see a doctor. Believe it or not, quite a few folks just don't go to a doctor regularly.

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[Lorien_the_first_one]

But advertising the drug to people who don't need it should increase the legal liability of everyone involved in getting the drug to the user who doesn't need it. Shouldn't it?

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[tragedy]

The market takes care of food just fine

Riiiight. Seriously, do you live in a cave.

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[tragedy]

I'm pretty sure Zimbabwe didn't nationalize food production. What they did was take farms away from people and award them to cronies. That's not the same thing.

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[tragedy]

But what percentage of that Medicare spending goes directly to paying for drugs. If Medicare was the actual producer of the drugs, it's hard to see how it wouldn't save them money.

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[garyebickford]

In fairness, the cost of sales for many industries is on the order of 45% to 55%, especially anything related to high tech. Actual manufacturing costs are generally around 20% - if not, the company is likely to lose money. The major exceptions are commodity items, and extremely competitive markets. Even in the highest of high tech the cost of R&D plus engineering is rarely more than 2-3%.

When I went through sales training at a company that then 'owned' the computer graphics market and much of the higher-end test equipment market, when evaluating a new product they first worked out what the supply/demand curve for the product was - what price point would maximize profits on that product. Then, if they couldn't manufacture the product for less than 20% of that, they didn't build it - there was no profit in it.

Note that the price does not depend on the cost - almost no sane business does that. The price depends on the market, the decision to build it depends on the relation between price and cost.

Here's how the equation generally works out, for most tech industries: 50% of retail = cost of sales; 20-25% profit; 5-10% admin; 10-20% insurance, manufacturing, operations, engineering, everything else including mowing the lawn outside the building.

One modern difference - using contract manufacturers like Foxconn means that the company can force the cost of manufacturing down to the point where only the leanest survive. So contract builders run on much smaller margins, but hopefully make it up on volume.

This is analogous to how grocery stores work - a grocery store's margin on most items is quite small, generally 2% or 3%. But cash flow through the store is immense - a typical grocery store may clear $1 million per week - not bad for 30 mostly low-paid employees. So while return on cash flow is small, return on equity is good. 30 employees times, (guessing) $40,000 fully loaded annual cost is $1,200,000 per year. Add the amortized cost of the store and inventory - say $5 million per year, which is all part of the base cost. Finally 3% of $52 million (annual revenues) is $1.5 million profit per year. So while profit on the books looks like 3%, profit of interest to the investors is more like $1.5 million / $7.5 million or 20% on equity. The biggest risk in this model is that efficiency and waste become hugely important - a small drop in efficiency or increase in costs acts as leverage to cause a huge drop in return on equity. [It's been a while since I've looked at this stuff but I think this is more or less useful, if not technically completely correct.]

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[Dishevel]

They are not spending money to advertise so that they can help more people.
The Ad money is to generate revenue. If it generates additional revenue over the expense of the Ad it is not a waste.
If it helps more people awesome. If not ok. That has zero bearing on weather or not the money spent of the Ads is a waste.

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[julesh]

It's not necessarily wasteful if it grows the budget by more than it costs.

It doesn't. All it does is redistribute it to the companies that spend the most on marketing. You're looking at it from the perspective of just one company: you have to consider the entire market as a whole. People will still buy drugs. They'll still want the best drugs available, which often means the expensive ones they're currently buying -- or similar drugs from competitors. They'll still have the same budget. It's effectively a zero-sum game.

Without the huge marketing budgets the money would flow to the supplier who provided the best quality drugs. Marketing perverts this: no drug company can afford to not spend similar amounts to their competitors on it, because if they didn't the doctors wouldn't know as much about their drugs as their competitors', and would prescribe the competitors' drugs in their place. If all the pharma companies suddenly stopped marketing their drugs, doctors would have to do a little more work to find out about new drugs, but (1) the cost of patient care would drop considerably and (2) there would be more money to reinvest in R&D.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[Dishevel]

To become a complete asshole in this discussion let me point something out.
The more people who buy and take drugs solely because they saw an ad on TV the higher the production of that drug.
The more they can make the lower they can price it. The stupid people get weird side effects and / or die.
The ones who need it can get it for a little less money.
The world is a better place. :)

P.S. I think that was some real good asshole stuff there.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[julesh]

If I never hear about Lipitor maybe I never bother getting a cholesterol screening and then die of heart disease at 37 instead of going to my doctor at 35 and saying, "Hey, I heard about this Lipitor thing and that men from age 35 should have cholesterol screenings."

Promoting preventative health care should be the responsibility of:

1. The government. It's a public health issue, they have a mandate to improve public health.
2. Your doctor. He should know your history well enough to know if you're likely to have issues and suggest screening for problems where there is a significant risk.
3. Your health insurance provider. Catching a serious issue early could save them large amounts of money, so they have good incentives to make sure you have every check-up that has a realistic chance of helping you.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[garyebickford]

Giving a drug to someone who does not need it is malpractice.

No it isn't. It would be if the drug reduces their health (including increased risk of future problems.) It _might_ be if the supply of that drug is so limited that giving it to someone who doesn't need it makes it unavailable for someone else. However beyond some very limited in-the-village example, this is impossible to ascertain in nearly all cases. Systematic effects are well beyond the scope of 'malpractice' and become just guilt-tripping.

Advertising drugs does not really increase your legally and ethically available customer base.

And this is just plain wrong. Look at the work that NGOs do to spread the word about the availability of, for example, bed nets for prevention of malaria. That is, technically, advertising a medical treatment. It has saved thousands of children's lives already. Similarly with polio vaccine - the PR campaign to make people aware of the need and the availability extends down to individual negotiations with village chiefs. That is exactly what the 'evil Pharma' companies do as well. Does describing symptoms of heart problems on the TV, in order to promote a particular brand of statin, not educate those who might have the disease? 'Tis true that the Pharma companies often take this too far, and use scare tactics, etc. But that does not relate to your thesis.

You are assuming at least the following: every potential customer already knows everything necessary about their health; they all have doctors who are paying attention; and there is one easy-to-determine ideal drug for every case. So all the patient & doctor have to do is look up the patient's particular profile and the menu of drugs that will work ideally will just pop out. Life is not that tidy.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[FictionPimp]

How is that any different than now?

Doctor gets advertisement. Has to make a decision on how the drug will work for his patient.
Doctor gets recommendation from computer with real world rankings by other doctors based on patient outcomes for patients with similar 'stats' to his patent. He has to make a decision on how the drug will work for his patient.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[garyebickford]

I heard of cholesterol as a health problem long before Lipitor existed

Yes, but how did you hear of it? Probably advertising, or PR in a magazine (same thing) or in school (same thing). Also, what about the folks who are just coming through high school, or early adulthood, who haven't heard? Now that you know something should all the information pipes be shut down? (Advertising and the various means of PR are certainly not perfect but they are useful.

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[Lorien_the_first_one]

Well, I don't know about your characterization of your post. You've made a good, Darwinian point about unnecessary drug use. On the other hand, in your example, does the subsidy received by the people who really need the drugs outweigh the costs to society for the medical care provided to the people who took drugs they don't need?

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[garyebickford]

+1. I think we have been spoiled by the 'success' of antibiotics and discovery of essential vitamins & minerals starting in the 1920s. These both resulted in remarkable, often permanent cures. So we as a culture now have an expectation of swift permanent cures. But many/most diseases are more like what you have described. And, of course, the antibiotic cycle may be coming to an end. Then we will have to go back to wearing gloves and avoiding crowds to protect us from the newly-deadly pathogenic diseases.

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[julesh]

Yeah, there are tons of anti-psychotics prescribed when most people just need a cheap harmless dose of lithium. A simple metal salt that costs a few cents.

Erm. Lithium is a *horrible* drug. Yes, it's cheap. But it has horrible side effects, even in comparison to most antipsychotics. And it is nowhere near as effective in actual cases of psychosis (although it works adequately for other conditions). I certainly wouldn't describe it as "harmless".

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[garyebickford]

I had hepatitis long ago, when I was a vegetarian. I asked the doctor if any dietary changes would help. He told me, "Nutrition was an elective. I didn't take it. As a vegetarian you know more about that than I do."

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[nedlohs]

They nationalized food distribution, which you may note was part of the evil profiteering.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[garyebickford]

Because they won a freedom of speech case, I think back in the 1970s. FDA lost the case.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[garyebickford]

IIRC, Lithium works for about 50% of the cases it's even tried on, and nobody knows why it works on some and not on others. It's not indicated for many forms of psychosis, and can even be counterproductive.

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. - H. L. Mencken

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[garyebickford]

Whoa now, Viagra does address a real problem! What if you were so fat you couldn't get it up anymore!? Viagra could be a real benefit then. You suck!

Hmm. Is that last phrase an insult, or an instruction to those with the problem? :D

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[Dishevel]

One of the issues I have with the health care debate is the fix.
We pay for emergency heath care.
People do not take care of themselves and cost us money or use the emergency room for the common cold.
We must pay for all their care to reduce emergency room costs.
If we do not we pay too much.
OR
We could give people the emergency care they need and actually make them pay off the debt.
And we could go back to a pay as you go system that did work before all the government involvement which caused the initial rise in costs.
People who have o pay $200 to go to the doctor will not fill the offices up with colds and other crap.
Doctors will have more time and be getting paid instead of filling out forms.
Then we just need to reduce liability so they do not have to run $8000 is tests every time you come in.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[garyebickford]

Look up allopathic medicine, and the history of the AMA. AMA was originally funded by the Pharma companies, and is still mainly supported by their ads in the AMA journals. During the 1930s through the 1950s at least, AMA worked hard to destroy any kind of medical treatment that did not involve taking drugs. My favorite example is the entire set of electrically-based therapies and experimentation. Only now (and still with great difficulty) are such therapies being researched significantly. See Biologically Closed Electrical Circuits - the original work was done in Sweden, in the 1960s. This avenue has become more 'respectable' recently with the advent of other non-invasive and non-medicinal therapies such as ultrasound, infrared, laser, etc. but the fundamental concepts were well established 40 years ago, for those willing to do a bit of research.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[tolkienfan]

Patient stats has a much higher dimentionality than netflix picks. It's not as simple as plugging in an existing algorithm.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[jbolden]

And we could go back to a pay as you go system that did work before all the government involvement which caused the initial rise in costs.

First off all, when is it in US history that government was not involved in health care? Can you give me a year?

Then, what evidence do you have that the government involvement in healthcare raises costs, given that the US health system is less regulated than most of the world's and by far the most expensive especially when the expense vs. effectiveness ratio is considered?

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[evilRhino]

Calling what the NCI does "basic research" is really glossing it over. It would be the equivalent of saying that once a compound is identified as being approved for use, any shlub could find a factory and mass produce and distribute it.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[Belial6]

The stupid people part has to be viewed from the fact that 'stupid' is a shade of gray. We all have our point that we decide people have moved to far along that line and have crossed into stupid. The vast majority of people just take what their doctor says at face value. I call that stupid, but others think that I am stupid for not taking them at face value because they are "experts".

A good example is one of my pet peeves. The Chicken Pox vaccine. The data indicates that it is more likely to be harmful to people who have taken it instead of helpful. It is also trivial to see the profit motives involved in it's wide spread use. The CDC literally lists profit for the parent as one of the primary reasons parents should give it to their kids.

Ask your friends with kids if their child has had the Chicken Pox vaccine. I would assume that we can agree that "I don't know" definitely fits into the "stupid category". For the remaining parents, ask them why they got it. I would bet that no one of them will tell you that it was because they were told it was good. While they likely didn't see an ad on TV, it is likely that their doctors are recommending it because of advertising.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[vux984]

This is such a dumb argument. You think the scientists who invent the cure would keep their mouths shut about it?

While I agree with you the argument isn't as dumb as you think.

Of course if the scientists invented the cure they would announce it, and I think its clear that no one is "sitting on the cure".

However, it is legitimate to ask: are they even looking for a cure? Maybe one hasn't been found because they aren't looking. Its not as far fetched as you think.

Funding is limited after all, and there are innumerable avenues of possible research. So its legitimate to ask what is big pharma actually choosing to fund? What percentage of the research budget is looking for the cure AIDS vs the percentage of the budget looking to refine lipitor 2.0 with fewer incidents of upset stomach?

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[Dishevel]

If we went back to a cash and carry healthcare system you would see quite a difference.
People would pick their doctors and doctors would again know their patients and you would pick a decent doctor who cares or not. Your choice.
Doctors can be profit driven pricks or care. Their patient load will reflect their choices sooner or later. With the technology we have sooner would be my bet.
Again. It is your responsibility to care for yourself.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[TFAFalcon]

And should people decide if they need a drug or not based on advertising? Or should they ask their doctor, who spends his life learning about health problems and remedies?

And should the doctor suddenly prescribe the drug to more people just because he's seen it on TV more often then that of a competitor? (Let's not even mention the 'gifts' he might receive if he's 'loyal' enough to a specific brand). Or should he trust scientific studies that were (hopefully) done when the drug was being developed and then undergoing trials?

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[Ungrounded Lightning]

What if they could make a pill that cured the source of your pain, relieving you of both your pain AND your financial burden to pay them?

Do you think they would?

If they could charge enough for the one-shot cure to make at least as much expected value as a lifetime subscription to the pills? In a New York minute!

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[TFAFalcon]

The more people that buy the drug the more expensive they'll make it. Not because they have to, but because the CAN. If you want increased demand to help promote efficiency and lower costs, you need to have competition. Without competition there is absolutely no reason for them to lower costs, when competition if stopped by patents.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[Belial6]

I don't know. No doubt that there are plenty of diseases that we can treat but not cure at this time, but I look at things like Herpes vs. Chicken Pox. We have all sorts of treatments for Herpes. I recognize that Herpes and Chicken Pox are not the exact same disease, but they are in the same family. Chicken Pox is a get it once, and any future outbreaks (Shingles) are both non-communicable and so rare that most people will never get one. If a treatment for symptoms was introduced, the vast majority of people would take it exactly the same number of times that they would take the 'cure'. So, we have a vaccine.

On the other hand, Herpes is forever contagious and has frequent outbreaks. The number of times a person takes the treatment is FAR more often than the number of times someone would take a 'cure' (vaccine)

Now, I am willing to believe that it is possible that a vaccine for Chicken Pox is easier than a vaccine for Herpes, but it would be silly not to see this as a highly suspicious situation given that the diseases are in the same family, Herpes is not airborne so could have a chance of actually being wiped out, there is more profit in Herpes being spread than wiped out, and that Herpes is a far bigger blight on humanity causing greater suffering by a wide margin then Chicken Pox.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[Belial6]

Because their competitor bought your doctor an all expense paid vacation, and they are worried that he might just neglect to bring up their treatment instead of their competitor's reasonable, but not quite as effective treatment?

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[mjtaylor24601]

Actually, according to your numbers, your company would be far better off spending 2k$ a year on marketing because the ROI is 4x, while in your second example the ROI is 2.5x and in the third it is 2x. Perfect example of the fact that "more" != "better".

But generally you're looking to maximize total profit not ROI. Assuming everything else is equal

• Expenses: 2k Gross Profit: 8k --> Net Profit: 6k
• Expenses: 4k Gross Profit: 10k --> Net Profit: 6k
• Expenses: 10k Gross Profit: 20k --> Net Profit: 10k

Of course this drastically oversimplifies things, as it ignores the risks of having greater amounts tied up in the venture, and the opportunity costs of what else you could be doing with that money, but you get the idea. Assuming you have the money to invest, you're better off with a 2x return on a much bigger investment than a 4x return on a much smaller investment.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[macromorgan]

I looked at Pfizer's numbers. Couldn't get a detailed breakdown of all of the stuff on the income statement (was too lazy to look for their SEC filings), but it looks like their largest single expense is depreciation (probably amortization of their drug patent portfolio), followed by selling, general and administrative (should include marketing and advertising), which for 2011 was marginally higher than their R&D expenses. I'm not sure your 50% number is accurate, although my sample size is admittedly small...

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[Belial6]

I do agree that for general health care, we should be on either a cash and carry, or fully government paid system. Having my doctor chosen largely by my employer negotiating with insurance companies on one side, and doctors negotiating with insurance companies on the other is absolutely the worst system we could have.

The first problem with our health system is that the vast majority of people don't understand the difference between health insurance and health payment plans.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[macromorgan]

Please tell me what mythical disease this is that causes pain but can be cured with a pill?

Pregnancy.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[trevelyon]

Or just invent new diseases that need new drugs to cure them, Restless Leg Syndrome anyone?

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[tragedy]

Believe me, I find the actions of the current Zimbabwe administration (that is to say, Mugabe) pretty indefensible. With a situation as hopelessly messed up as they currently have there, how exactly would free market distribution of insufficient food be any better? In that kind of emergency situation, any government will nationalize food distribution. The US effectively did so back during WWII.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[djchristensen]

The problem with that theory is that there is reasonably strong competition in the pharmaceutical industry, so there's bound to be at least one company that can see the significant $$ to be made from a cure, especially if they have a patent on it and can set the price as necessary to insure a good profit.

It's just a little too conspiracy-theorist for me to think all drug companies are colluding to squash any research into cures versus "maintenance" drugs. We all like to hate the drug companies, but we hate them because they are more motivated by greed/profit than by altruism. They also don't control all avenues of research, with plenty of public-sector researchers being very interested in research on cures.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[djchristensen]

The issue with advertising costs, in my opinion, is not *how much* is spent, but *why and where* it is spent. Drug companies have started going after consumers so that those consumers go to their doctor and insist on getting a drug they saw on TV that they are sure is going to fix everything for them. That's what the commercial said, right? It should be the responsibility of the physician to be aware of the available drugs and discuss the best options with the patient.

Unfortunately, that doesn't always work out in practice, as the drug companies have been buying (at least some) physicians for a long time. As a patient, it's very hard to know if a doctor is recommending a drug because it's the best choice or because the manufacturer sent them to Hawaii for two weeks. Barring gifts/incentives/etc might help remove conflicts of interest, but that opens up a whole other line of argument.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[djchristensen]

I had a different experience. Had a blood test, 1500+ triglycerides (under 200 is "normal"). Doctor said I was in for serious trouble if I didn't fix it. Gave me a couple of options, one to take Niacin, the other to change my lifestyle from non-vegetable, meat-eating couch potato to healthy eater with lots of exercise. I took Niacin for 90 days, during which I lost 40 lbs and went from completely winded after running 100 yds to running 10ks (in addition to swimming, biking, lifting weights). Triglycerides dropped well into normal range (100), stopped taking Niacin, and have been doing well since, as long as I keep up with a reasonable diet and exercise.

Many, perhaps most, people will not do what I did. I have a *very* strong preference to avoid drugs if at all possible (I don't drink alcohol mostly for that reason), so I could motivate myself to make an extreme change in my lifestyle. You had a crappy doctor for not even discussing the alternatives, but if I were a doctor and had patient after patient saying, "exercise every day, lose 40lbs, eat vegetables with every meal, are you kidding?", I might get tired of wasting the time making the suggestion, too.

So, while your doctor may have been getting incentives to offer drugs, it's just as likely he was playing the odds that you weren't capable of doing what you did. Kudos, by the way, for not being a lazy asshole taking expensive drugs just so you could avoid changing an unhealthy lifestyle.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[Grond]

Yes, you did need to provide a link because googling it shows that you are wrong. Promotional budgets at US pharmaceutical firms average 24.4% of their US domestic sales, less than half what you claimed. Here's another source saying 30%, and that's from a largely anti-big pharma report.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think pharma companies should spend (or necessarily be allowed to spend) so much money on advertising, especially direct-to-consumer advertising, but get your facts straight, especially when you're going to make such sweeping claims.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[Dishevel]

The problem with full government supplied is that the healthcare becomes (in the view of the consumer) free.
Again this means that people do not have to take care of themselves or they go for every fucking sniffle because WTF its free right?
So now you have the costs to run the system all fucked up high with the burden on the successful. These are the people who do not have the time to sit around and wait 9 hours to see a doctor. Because they own a business. So not only do they have to pay for the healthcare of everyone else but now they have to pay extra for a private doctor, Meanwhile the government has decided that people are using the system too much. Of course they are. It seems free to them.
So now you need to go see some DMV worker to get a piece of paper that says you can go see the doctor.
Every year we have it it will get worse.
At least if it costs you you can ration it yourself.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[mjtaylor24601]

Wow, I don't know who taught you to debate, but if you paid them you should demand a refund.

You uneducated fuck.

Ad hominem attack.

There is no viable argument against capitalism as the good far outweighs any of the, more news worthy, bad.

Completely unsubstantiated assertion.

It is not like infrastructure at all. What corporations are taking care of infrastructure for us? How many are independently researching and manufacturing drugs?

Completely missing the point (or deliberately ignoring it). He's arguing that it's as important as vital infrastructure, and thus should not be trusted to for-profit corporations, in the same what the critical infrastructure is not. Now the extent to which this is actually true is debatable, and one might question whether it's wise to argue this course of action given the state of some of our publicly maintained "critical infrastructure". But you did neither of those things.

I'm not fan-boy'ing for pharma, I'm just saying your diarrhea of the brain needs some remedy.

More ad hominem attacks. Keep it up I'm sure you're really winning him over.

If you are going to rant on something at least come to the keyboard with a half-stable argument.

The phrase "practice what you preach" comes to mind.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[ignavus]

One should go to the doctor yearly. This is a healthy habit, right up there with brushing your teeth and exercise and cooking food thoroughly.

I hope you brush your teeth and do exercise and cook your food thoroughly more than "yearly", though.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[Belial6]

I am not going to argue the benefits of pay as you go, as those are obvious. My point was just that what we have now has all of the same problems as government run health care, but there is a middle man grabbing handfuls of money in the process.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[VortexCortex]

The more people who buy and take drugs solely because they saw an ad on TV the higher the production of that drug.

That's not always true. You've jumped to conclusions. The production of controlled substances frequently outpaces demand.
You failed to realise that the government puts limits on the amounts of some drugs that can be made. Therefore, advertising drives up demand, Hence the price goes up because supply is limited, and poorer people who actually need the damn drug can either no longer afford it, or it becomes yet another tax funded burden.

P.S. Your "asshole" stinks.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[Dishevel]

Again, all you are pointing out is that government is the problem.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[Shompol]

pharma companies spend 50% on advertising

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[Shompol]

- The grand-grandparent argument was that pharma companies are wasteful, and their monopolies and way of doing business should be taken away.
- The grandparent's idea was "oh, but their research ain't cheap, so their business is justified".
- The article you linked is titled "Big Pharma Spends More On Advertising Than Research And Development, Study Finds". While I must thank you for supporting my point, your number of "24.4% of their US domestic sales" is misleading: "Sales" does not equate "budget"! Sales is the gross amount of money they get, from which they subtract things like taxes and raw material cost, operations, building rent and other expenses not related to our argument. Budget is a more loosely defined term, with meaning depending on context. So it is from that "budget" that they could spend ALL on research they dump over 50% on peddling it to doctors and to patients directly, soaring cost of our healthcare, prescribing their patented, overpriced and unproven drugs to patients who hardly need them, etc.

Re:Oblig: TED Talk

[sjames]

A few months ago I had a dreadful toothache. After a few days of antibiotic, no more pain.

One with a clue, ten thousand to go

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does it need one veteran specialist to see that broken is broken? Everybody else still considers the courts to be, well, like tennis courts. A game is played according to arbitrary rules, and the best specialists win.

What do we need engineers for? The courtrooms are where it is decided who is innovating.

Re:One with a clue, ten thousand to go

[Serious Sandwich]

How is tennis game won by specialists? A good tennis player is a good tennis player. Sports really takes skills. It really does. Sports is amazingly difficult career and something "engineers" and geeks don't see. And don't get me even started on the psychological aspect of having the necessary coping skills to be a celebrity and always on spotlight.

Re:One with a clue, ten thousand to go

[jeffmeden]

And don't get me even started on the psychological aspect of having the necessary coping skills to be a celebrity and always on spotlight.

Sounds good. 99% of celebrities haven't gotten started on coping skills either.

Re:One with a clue, ten thousand to go

[Fwipp]

Being a specialist isn't a bad thing, but asking a specialist in astrophysics to authoritatively decide the relative merits of various Baroque music compositions is.

He volunteered...

[Gideon Wells]

On one hand, I agree with him. On the other, we have a judge who volunteered apparently just to make a stand in this case. How long before "receptive" judges start volunteering to argue for the other side...

Re:He volunteered...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite... if you RTA fully, you'll find out he only registered his interest in any cases involving patents with the lower courts, and the judge that was assigned the case requested to transfer it over to him, which he accepted.

So, no, he didn't get to rummage around in the bin for this one. It was 3 interlocking pieces:

1) The judge from Wisconsin the system assigned the case to knew (or was informed) of Posners interest in patent cases and asked to transfer it to him.
2) Various pieces of judicial administration machinery allowed the transfer.
3) Posner had to accept the transfer in his existing docket schedule.

Re:He volunteered...

[WillDraven]

There is a bit of a difference between "I'm taking taking this persons side" and "the fact that you're both in court over this at all is stupid."

No software patents!

[Infiniti2000]

This guy, Richard Posner, is my new hero.

Re:No software patents!

[Anonymous Coward]

software is still covered by copyright and licensing agreements.

It is one of the very few places where IP laws of different types overlap.

Re:No software patents!

[tangent3]

Copyright laws still exist even if software patents go away.

Re:No software patents!

[w_dragon]

That would be a copyright violation, which has nothing to do with patents. Unless by 'rips off' you mean 'reimplements without access you my source code', in which case I'm not seeing the problem. Marketing is part of business, and if your business can't do it, even with a significant first-mover advantage, why should someone else not be allowed to compete with you?

Re:No software patents!

[jpstanle]

If he "rips it off" then he is violating copyright protections. If he copies the look and feel of the software with the intent to deceive or confuse the customer, then there is probably a trademark violation. If he just duplicates the functionality of the software, well, that's just competition. Deal with it.

Re:No software patents!

[tepples]

Unless by 'rips off' you mean 'reimplements without access you my source code'

And some video game companies are winning lawsuits over even that. I can provide citations on request.

Re:No software patents!

[tepples]

Tetris v. Xio

Meh

[Greyfox]

I've seen some software things done that were truly patent-worthy. I've seen way - way more obvious lame crap. Overall I'd say they slow progress down more than they help it. Imagine what would have happened if someone had patented quicksort or some of the design patterns. The LZW algorithm that made GIFs inaccessible until the late 90s was bad enough.

Unfortunately, I don't see the current state of affairs changing anytime soon. There are too many people invested in the current system, and campaigning on a platform of IP reform isn't likely to gain much traction with the public at large, at least not without a LOT more *AA lawsuits. I'm sure the *AA realizes this and keeps its lawsuits fairly discreet and under the public's pain threshold, while they work on conditioning people that copying is theft.

Re:Meh

[betterunixthanunix]

I've seen some software things done that were truly patent-worthy

Except that mathematics is not patentable, and we has fundamental results about software being a form of math:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry-Howard_Isomorphism

So why make apologies for software patents? Either we stop trying to uphold the previous principles that made math unpatentable, or we stop giving out patents on math that is expressed as software. Otherwise we just have the mess that we see today.

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

as touchpos->lim(unlockpath), probability(cat)->0

Re:Meh

[Dragonslicer]

Except that mathematics is not patentable, and we has fundamental results about software being a form of math

Atoms aren't patentable. We know that machines are just a collection of atoms. Therefore, no machine should be patentable.

There are several good arguments for why software patents do not achieve the goals that the patent system is supposed to have. "Software is just math" is not one of them.

Re:Meh

[WillDraven]

Well, it is pretty much using a user interface to increase a value until an upper boundary is reached...

Re:Meh

[Shompol]

if X is position of the slider in the interval [1..100], and Y (Boolean algebra) stands for "unlocked", then Y(X) = (X > 99)
Yes, software is math all the way

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

The "slide to unlock" patent has prior art in physical switches. If Apple patented an algorithm that improved detection of a finger on top of a slide switch that would be mathematics patent, but a genuine improvement on the state of the art. The patent system was designed to protect this.

What Apple actually patented was the concept of a slide switch, but wait for it, one that's on the screen of a mobile phone. But they didn't invent switches, touchscreens, finger detection, or mobile phones. What we need to stop is "pre-existing business model, but on a computer/internet/web browser/wireless/mobile phone" because they aren't innovative, they're exploiting a broken and corrupt patent and court system for the purposes of monopolization.

Re:Meh

[phantomfive]

Overall I'd say they slow progress down more than they help it.

You are right. At least one study has been done that shows software patents drain more money from the industry than they provide. So overall, computer companies lose from software patents.

Re:Meh

[betterunixthanunix]

Atoms aren't patentable. We know that machines are just a collection of atoms. Therefore, no machine should be patentable.

Except that a collection of atoms is not an atom in and of itself. When you combine mathematical results, you have yet another mathematical result.

There are several good arguments for why software patents do not achieve the goals that the patent system is supposed to have. "Software is just math" is not one of them.

Actually, it is a common criticism of software patents. Both the Church-Turing thesis and the Curry-Howard correspondence have been pointed to in debates about software patents, especially in cases where the patents cover nothing more than common algebraic, number theoretic, or statistical techniques where the variables have been given specific labels (i.e. the patent is on how you interpret a set of variables). See, for example, the criticism of the eHarmony patent:

http://www.technollama.co.uk/patenting-maths

In general, when there is such an obvious patent on math, it is criticized for being a patent on math. Yet anyone with an undergrad level education in the theory of computation knows that all software is math; it is just less obvious in most cases because of the abstractions we use, which are designed to make us think that we are building a machine of some sort.

Re:Meh

[Exrio]

Actually it is a perfectly good argument as far as I'm concerned. I do believe no machine should be patentable. I don't believe the patent system achieves it's supposed goals at all, software or not.

Re:Meh

[Grond]

Good thing that software patents don't claim the software per se but rather the use of the software on a computer (i.e. a physical computing device), or the software as encoded on a physical, computer-readable storage medium.

A program in the abstract can be turned into a mathematical proof. But software in the real-world is not math. For example, consider Bresenham's line algorithm. The algorithm (or its equivalent mathematical proof) will not cause lines to appear on a computer screen. In patent terms, it lacks utility, an essential requirement of any patentable invention. But the same algorithm implemented as part of an executable program on a computer can be quite useful.

So that's why the "but software is just math, math isn't patentable, therefore software isn't patentable" argument fails. "Software" is math only in a highly abstract theoretical sense. As implemented on physical computing devices it is not. And it is only the latter type that is patentable.

not a fan of...

[ganjadude]

patents, but what about a compromise? What if software patents and electronic patents were only valid for like 2 years, that in the computer world is more than enough time for you to recover your research money without hampering the development of future tech. I would prefer none but I think this would be a fair compromise.

Re:not a fan of...

[Zaphod The 42nd]

I hate software patents and I think they're entirely unnecessary. As he said, being first to market is enough.

But I absolutely agree, if we're going to stick with them, a term limit of like 4 years on software patents would go a LONG way.

Re:not a fan of...

[ganjadude]

The anon was correct, when I used 2 years, I meant "2 years from the 1st day of sale of the completed product" 2 years in general would probably be way to low

Re:not a fan of...

[I_am_Jack]

...if we're going to stick with them, a term limit of like 4 years on software patents would go a LONG way.

Or less. Given that the shelf-life of most mobile technology seems to be three years or less, and most of a new mobile handset's sales seem to be made in the first six months, why not give them one year of exclusivity, then open the flood gates? Apple is one of the largest companies in the world, and software patents didn't get them there. It was innovation and sales, and as a result, it's lead the way. Despite Android handset sales eclipsing iPhone sales at this place in time, iPhones will still be sold in record numbers. Why the hell waste money on a patent? The same goes for Bezos and his asinine One-Click to buy patent. Again, Amazon is not the company it is based on that feature.

Re:not a fan of...

[Zaphod The 42nd]

Less sounds even better, but I'm trying to win over the people who think they have a right to a patent for life here. :)
And even a few years would be a massive improvement.

But I'm with you, lets get them as short as we can.

Re:not a fan of...

[SecurityGuy]

A shorter time would be good and appropriate, but doesn't address the root problem that most software patents are granted to things that should not be patentable at all. Granting obvious patents and leaving it for the courts to sort out IF you can afford to go that route is the problem.

As much as I agree, that's not the task of a judge

[captainpanic]

A judge should check whether someone acts within the limits set by the law. A judge shouldn't be publicly trying to change the laws, just like a politician should not try to get involved in a court case to get someone convicted.

Still, I agree that our patent system is over-used, and it seems that it often inhibits innovation instead of facilitate it.

Re:Speachless.

[Anonymous Coward]

"speachless"? Like, there's a fruit called a speach, and you have none?

Then he should resign and run for congress

[ShanghaiBill]

Judges should stick to judging, and leave legislating to legislatures. Software patents may be a bad idea, and the modern patent system may be detrimental to innovation, but that is not the concern of judges. Judges are supposed to decide based on legality, they are not supposed to decide the sensibility. The Constitution clearly gives the government the power to issue patents. So it is up to Congress to fix this, and that won't happen until enough voters care.

Re:Then he should resign and run for congress

[Zaphod The 42nd]

Except if he finds that software shouldn't have been patentable in the first place by the patent law.

Software = Math. And the original patent law states very clearly you cannot patent math.

Judges ARE supposed to consider how laws should be interpreted.

Re:Then he should resign and run for congress

[Halo1]

Judges should stick to judging, and leave legislating to legislatures. Software patents may be a bad idea, and the modern patent system may be detrimental to innovation, but that is not the concern of judges. Judges are supposed to decide based on legality, they are not supposed to decide the sensibility. The Constitution clearly gives the government the power to issue patents. So it is up to Congress to fix this, and that won't happen until enough voters care.

You seem to forget the part whereby software patents used to be forbidden, and then were gradually introduced via several court cases, most famous of which are Diamond v. Diehr and the State Street decision. There is no law by the US Congress that either specifically allows or forbids software patents. All of the software patent decisions until now have been legislation from the bench.

And given that the US Constitution explicitly specifies that patents can only be be granted in order to "promote the progress of science and useful arts", I'd argue that properly applying the law does require the judge to take into account that aspect as well.

Re:Then he should resign and run for congress

[T.E.D.]

That is true. However, it is exactly the Court's job to decide what the law actually says when there is a disagreement about same. Somebody has to be the ultimate authority on that, and this is their job.

Also, the Constitution does not give the Government the power to issue patents for just anything the government feel like issuing them for. In particular, it has to be an inventor's discovery. Can things like "business methods" or algorithms be considered "inventions"? You and I have an opinion. However, telling us all where exactly the Constitutonal line is draw is the court's job, and they have never definitively done so for software (or for that matter "business method") patents.

They have done so for pure math (eg: formulas) and they are not patentable. Are algorithms fundamentally different from math? I suspect most of my CS teachers would say no. I suspect Apple would say yes. We need the court to say.

Re:Then he should resign and run for congress

[Vairon]

Judging is exactly what he is doing.

The judicial branch has the power to interpret laws written by the legislative branch. The U.S. Patent Act does not specify software as patentable. Since the legislative branch has not amended that act to be more specific, with regard to software, it is up to the judicial branch to interpret. Even the 2010 Bilski v. Kappos rulling by the US Supreme Court left many questions unanswered on what is patentable or not with regard to software.

In case you were unaware, this is what title 35, Section 101 of the United States Code says about what is patentable

35 U.S.C. 101 Inventions patentable.
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.

If you are curious about the history of the courts conflicted rulings on what is patentable with regard to software I recommend you check out this link: http://www.bitlaw.com/software-patent/bilski-and-software-patents.html

Re:Then he should resign and run for congress

[slimjim8094]

Software patents exist as a class of patents because a software patent was issued and there was a lawsuit that upheld the patent. AFAIK there's no legislation specifically expanding the class of patents to cover software. Thus it's the concern of the judiciary. Furthermore, even if there were legislation, it would still be within the scope of the judiciary to decide whether software could be considered an invention under the Constitution. They've already decided that mathematics can't be patented, for example.

In a similar vein, there's not actually any legislation requiring that the police read a suspect his Miranda rights. That's the result of a Supreme Court ruling on it, and since we live in a common-law system and that's binding precedent, any case where a suspect isn't read his Miranda rights will be thrown out by any lower court.

It's a mistake to think that only legislation is law. Legislation can override precedent that "fills in a gap", but what we think of as the body of law is jurisprudence as informed by the legislation. That's what makes us a common-law system.

Appeal just waiting to happen

[Supp0rtLinux]

Its starting to sound like Posner had a specific agenda. After all, he volunteered for this one. It would seem that instead of being a judge and enforcing or enacting the law, he used this as his proverbial soapbox and to make a point. I can't wait for Apple to realize this (they probably already have) and appeal for a new trial to go forward thanks to Posner expressing his opinions, etc. The fact is, Posner doesn't make the laws; he interprets and applies them. By volunteering for the case, then shooting it down, then talking about his discontent with technological patents, he's made it pretty clear he has an agenda.

Re:Appeal just waiting to happen

[Supp0rtLinux]

Also, his comparison to pharma is a bit off. Sure they invest years into stuff, but how many of them do we later find out faked tests or results and years later are being sued for killing or harming thousands? Not to mention the idea of gene patents and such. Even worse, for most of the psychological drugs out there, the pharmas don't really even know how they work. Sure they know they're affecting neurotransmitters or serotonin levels, etc, but whereas a technology patent such as Apple might have is intended to do one specific thing or one way of doing, they know how its done. Most of the drugs on the market are still sort of voodoo. Yes, we know they affect this level or that, etc etc... but we don't 100% know how it works and why which is why there are so many off-market or other uses and why the long term effects often result in death/harm and subsequent lawsuits. Yet, Posner thinks its okay for the pharmas to get a patent for years of work, but Apple or Samsung or Motorola don't deserve the same thing? Also, worth noting that the only reason pharmas invest so many years into their works and patents is because they have to: its called clinical trials. If pharmas could move as fast as tech companies, they would. But fortunately for us, testing needs to be done and it takes time and refinement. The comparison of fast tech to pharma doesn't equate.

Re:Appeal just waiting to happen

[Samantha Wright]

He still he had an extremely sound point when he indicated that Apple and Motorola couldn't actually prove significant damages. I doubt there will be too many other judges (outside of perhaps a fabulously corrupt district) who would reverse that. The patent suits that seem to do really well are the ones referring to cutting-edge and recently-released products, where the economic harm doesn't need to be proven because it's too new to tell. (I think.)

Re:Appeal just waiting to happen

[the eric conspiracy]

Let's deconstruct your rant.

>but how many of them do we later find out faked tests or results and years later are being sued for killing or harming thousands?

Faked results is very rare. So the answer is probably that cases where faked results result in killing thousands is zero.

> Not to mention the idea of gene patents and such.

If you followed the news in the field you'd realize gene patents are under severe challenge in the courts right now. There is a good chance that the logic of Bilsky will apply to them.

> for most of the psychological drugs out there, the pharmas don't really even know how they work

Knowing how something works has never been a requirement for patenting something, drug or otherwise. In fact it can be a hindrance because if you know how it works it can be argued that it is obvious. I actually had a patent once where I knew how it worked, and the attorney had me take that explanation out of the application because he thought the examiner would use it against me. This is a technology patent, not a science patent. HOWEVER the FDA regulatory process is increasingly focused on demonstrating how something works. Certainly you need to know the metabolic action of the drug even if you don't know exactly the way it affects the mind.

>but Apple or Samsung or Motorola don't deserve the same thing?

Go read the patents that these mobile phone makers are pushing. They are NOT the results of hundreds of millions of dollars of investments. They are trivial UI elements or simple processes like the classic one click order thing. And if they are at all profound they are implementations of algorithms, essentially math patents. They are either trivial or should not be patentable.

> Also, worth noting that the only reason pharmas invest so many years into their works and patents is because they have to: its called clinical trials.

What is the point to this statement? Are you proposing that we don't do clinical trials as a precursor to getting rid of patents for new drugs? If we did that we might as well get rid of the FDA too.

It's irrelevant WHY pharms do clinical trials. What's relevant is that so long as they have to pay the huge expenses for these it's going to be part of the cost equation for introduction of a new drug. And without patent protection they are going to be unable to recover these costs.

And if they can't well then there won't be private investment into drug development.

Re:Appeal just waiting to happen

[Samantha Wright]

Ah, I'm afraid it's really more spot-on than you realise. The vast, vast majority of pharmacologists and pharmaceutical companies aren't so evil; they're invisible and you never hear about them in the news. It's only the exceptional cases—the psychopathic executives whose crap would be invisible in any other industry (e.g. bribing doctors), a neglected interaction between two common chemicals, the group that just invested "too much" into a product to let it fail—that actually get media attention. About thirty drugs are approved by the FDA per year (down from forty-ish in the late nineties), and while drug development companies do get hauled over the legal coals frequently, the leading reason is over-generalization in marketing material.

Drug mechanisms, however, are not generally voodoo. Mind-altering substances frequently have inexplicable consequences further down the line, but the mechanism of their immediate effect (e.g. how they influence neurotransmitters) is rarely debated; drug designs have to be very specific to be discovered in the first place. It's unreasonable to ask a drug company to explain why one psychoactive drug creates a different high from another, however, beyond the simple questions of "what does it target," "where does it target it," and "how long does it remain in the body," because no one knows how any of that stuff works. We don't know how the mind works beyond these very basic levels—so would you rather have a bit of uncertainty in the down-stream effects, or no drugs at all?

Posner's position comes from the simple fact that a drug's components are much less interchangeable than a phone's or an operating system's. A successful drug performs one very specific task, like blocking a serotonin receptor, and must do so in a manner that protects it from the body's desire to get rid of it, as well as making sure it gets to the point in the body where it should act in the first place. Holistically, the drug must function in a very specific way. A drug patent covers the whole molecule. Electronics, by contrast, are essentially modular, and their patents only cover small portions: a phone would still be a phone if you took out the camera, or removed the multiple-source search function (which was what Apple sued Samsung over regarding the Galaxy Nexus), or re-did the layout of the home screen.

Here's a specific tech-pharma comparison that equates: imagine that Apple was suing Samsung not for making a product that superficially resembled theirs, but was identical to the iPhone or the iPad. In the pharmaceutical world, all that you have to do to get past this constraint (and create a so-called "me too" drug) is modify one of the side-chain groups: imagine replacing the camera with a lousier one or adding a hole on the side so you could stick a wristband through it. That would be sufficient to let you produce Apple's product at a very low price and completely decimate them in the market. This is why pharmaceutical companies spend most of their budgets on marketing, followed by R&D.

The vast majority of software and design patents refer to developments that take very little time to think up; not years. This is why software patent trolls are a viable business model. Apple got an injunction against Samsung in Europe because the shape of the Galaxy Tab was too similar to the iPad. They got an injunction against Samsung in the US because the search box on the home screen in Android 4.1 can browse the local file system as well as search the web. The pharmaceutical equivalent would drastically affect very integral parts of a wide range of drugs in many cases.

Re:Appeal just waiting to happen

[RightSaidFred99]

Shut up.

He's expressing his opinion on a piece of law, namely that software patents are necessary or required by current patent laws.

It's too bad

[Dunbal]

had a better claim to intellectual property protection because of the enormous investment it takes to create a successful drug.

Yeah, too bad Bayer doesn't make any money at all on acetyl salicylic acid because it hasn't been patent protected for many, many years. What the hell is this argument for drug companies? It becomes hardER to earn a profit once the patent expires, but it's certainly not impossible to do so. You would think that monopoly is the only way to make money, according to them. No, monopoly gets you the $50 pill and the $500 vaccine.

Re:It's too bad

[Shados]

Some drugs for very rare conditions cost a fortune because they take just as much research as any other drug, but only apply to a few hundred people, if that. If it cost 1 billion to research, but 100 bucks to apply the treatment...you're never making the money back if your competitor just looks at what you did, sell it for $100 * 300 treatments, and call it a day.

Just an example among many.

Re:It's too bad

[Dunbal]

Your argument is assuming that drug companies waste time and money researching drugs for "very rare conditions". They do not. In fact most of the drugs that are useful in "very rare conditions" were actually intended for something else and accidentally found to help said condition.

Re:It's too bad

[clarkholmes]

From what I've read, it seems like drugs like that don't get produced very often.. not enough volume (even at shockingly high prices) to make it profitable enough to consider.

Re:It's too bad

[Shompol]

And then they spend over 50% of budget for marketing, which is a complete waste and presses physicians to prescribe their patented crap to patients who do not need it. The whole system is rotten, sorry.

Re:It's too bad

[the eric conspiracy]

> What the hell is this argument for drug companies?

Bringing a new drug to market is very different cost proposition than selling something that is a product where the technology and regulatory status is well established.

Comparing aspirin to a new cancer drug is just silly.

Re:It's too bad

[DragonWriter]

Yeah, too bad Bayer doesn't make any money at all on acetyl salicylic acid because it hasn't been patent protected for many, many years.

Much of what they do make on aspirin is because of an association with the product built on the basis of the the patent they had when it was first introduced.

Certainly, they don't make the kind of money they'd make on an equally broadly useful drug that was also protected by a patent.

Re:It's too bad

[RightSaidFred99]

Meaningless sarcasm. If Bayer had spent $2 billion dollars researching and getting Aspirin to the market recently and immediately had to sell a bottle of 100 for $1.98 then they _would_ make no money. Then they'd say "F it" and just stop researching anything that's too expensive.

Ever see that old pre-Internet era meme where people would cross out the complicated instructions on the hand blow dryer in the bathroom and write "fuck it, wipe hands on pants", a clever comment on the over-complexity of the instructions?

Bayer in your world: "Fuck it, move factories to make Viagra, end all research."

Patents for different sectors

[awjr]

If you RTFA, you'll realise this is not just about software patents. He's going so far as to suggest that patents are suitable for certain industries (e.g. Pharmaceuticals) where the investment to create the products is immense. Software is one of those industries where patents hold back innovation. Software is more about execution.

Just stop being idiots about it.

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

The problem isn't patents per se. The problem is idiocy in the patent office in collusion with big corporations.

Somebody is going to invent good robots for the house someday. Somebody is going to invent real artificial intelligence. There's a lot of work jamming forward ever more-efficient high speed 3D algorithms and routing algorithms. People are working on robot cars.

These things can and should have protection.

Here's a good rule: If it's just a simulation of something that already exists, and the mechanism is known (note that the I of AI is not yet known) it's not patentable (unless said thing is still under patent, in which case that guy owns it.) This isn't to say that particularly clever implementations couldn't also be patented.

Just thinking, "Hey! We could simulate this -- patent!" just doesn't cut it. And the standard seems much weaker than even that.

Re:Just stop being idiots about it.

[StripedCow]

But if one person (or company) has a monopoly (which is what a patent is) on artificial intelligence and robots, then basically we're all out of work. And also those people whose shoulders were used to stand on by these new monopolists. IMHO, another sign that patents are inherently wrong.

Re:Just stop being idiots about it.

[NatasRevol]

It's all steps along the way. You're saying only patent the really big steps. But often, it's just a lot of little steps that everyone calls obvious, especially in hindsight. The real question is how big should the steps be before patentable. Right now, the patent office says very, very, very small steps. The better balance is probably somewhere in between.

Re:Just stop being idiots about it.

[Shompol]

These things can and should have protection.

You believe that your statement is self-evident; It is not. Why should these things be patented? You develop a self-driving car, and suddenly nobody else can sell self-driving cars? How can this be good? Advances in self-driving car segment suddenly freezes for 15 years, because nobody can innovate, while you don't have to. What's next, we get conquered by a nation that did not observe your stupid IP laws, and they advanced light years ahead in technological development?

Re:Just stop being idiots about it.

[zlives]

does the patent office benefit from the number of patents filed...

Re:As much as I agree, that's not the task of a ju

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually he is doing what a Judge should do, he is examining whether software should fall under patent law. This examination and interpretation is under the purview of the judicial branch.

Re:As a software programmer

[Anonymous Coward]

Then the problem becomes who or what decides what's new and what's not?
And then it's only a matter of time before they're paid off.

Re:As much as I agree, that's not the task of a ju

[sanosuke001]

In his defense, if a lot of these patents seem overly obvious (slide to unlock on a TOUCH device? c'mon...) then he should be throwing these lawsuits out.

Re:As a software programmer

[Anonymous Coward]

You would be protected sufficiently by copyright, a patent means something else.

Look at it from this perspective, using patents the way you want limits the software industry by saying only this company can make any kind of a software that does this. This has a very negative effect on the industry because they last 16 years. Additionally, patents are supposed to be qualified to protect inventions and that those are unique and not easily thought of by others. By comparison, thousands of programmers have already created applications that partially duplicate everything that is in existence in someway now. So the real question is... are you really creating something new, or are you just trying to write software and use a legal methods to force your relevance instead of just being better at it than the programmer next to you?

Re:As much as I agree, that's not the task of a ju

[kaizendojo]

The judge is not publicly trying to change anything, unless you can show evidence to the contrary. He is merely giving his higly qualified opinion, which as a judge, he's not only entitled to do, but encouraged to do so.

Maybe your just taking your nym to literally... LOL

Constitutional? We don't know.

[T.E.D.]

Some of the sitting supreme court justices have implied they aren't sure Software patents are valid either.

Personally, I think it would be best for both sides if someone took this issue to the Supreme court and got it decided. I have my own opinion of what they should decide, but either way everyone would be better off without the uncertainty.

Re:As a software programmer

[Anonymous Coward]

As a software programmer, if I write an amazing piece of software that nobody has seen before and some big company comes and makes a totally ripped off clone, I'd be pissed and that'd be unfair.

Patents have nothing to do with fairness. Never had, never will. They started out as gifts by the King of England to his friends. Nowadays, whether or not you can enforce a patent mainly depends on whether you have a sufficient number of lawyers and amount of money.

Also keep in mind that patents in no way guarantee that you will be able to distribute and sell your "amazing piece of software". A patent only covers a single "invention" part of that software. There may be hundreds of patents owned by other companies/people that also apply to your program, and in principle you'd have to get a license/permission for every single one of those before you can use whatever they claim.

In short: as a programmer you are probably constantly "ripping off" hundreds of patent holders with every program you write. Unless you plan on going into the patent trolling business, it's unlikely that your one hypothetical patent will ever give you more benefit than the liabilities you have due to other people's patents.

Re:As much as I agree, that's not the task of a ju

[LordLucless]

A judge shouldn't be publicly trying to change the laws, just like a politician should not try to get involved in a court case to get someone convicted.

Huh? A judge should totally try and change the laws, just like any other citizen should. No, he shouldn't do it in the context of his job, but this doesn't appear to be the case. He's not denying the validity of patents in the cases that come before him, but in his office, when he's not behind the bench, he's offering critical opinion of existing law based on his experience as a judge. More power to him! Wish there were more doing the same.

Re:As much as I agree, that's not the task of a ju

[nine-times]

A judge should check whether someone acts within the limits set by the law. A judge shouldn't be publicly trying to change the laws, just like a politician should not try to get involved in a court case to get someone convicted.

Were there laws written specific to allow software patents, or did some judge decide at some point that patent laws applied to software design? If it was decided in a prior case, what is the judge's obligation to follow precedent in this case?

A lot of US law is, in fact, set in precedent in courts. There is a protocol for when judges are supposed to follow precedents, but even so, they can find a way to challenge it if they need to. The real test is whether their challenge will stand up on appeal.

Re:As much as I agree, that's not the task of a ju

[u38cg]

Common law much?

MATH = Not Patentable

[Zaphod The 42nd]

By the definition of patents, software should be un-patentable.
Math is not patent-able. Math is intrinsic, part of the world and nature around us. We do not invent math, we merely discover it.

Programs can be converted into Lambda Calculus.
Lambda Calculus is math.
Programs are math.
Programs are un-patentable. QED.

Copyright is plenty enough.

"My personal opinion is that algorithms are like mathematics, i.e. inherently non-patentable. It worries me that most patents are about simple ideas that I would expect my students to develop them as part of their homework." - DONALD FUCKING KNUTH

If you think you know more about Computer Science than Donald Knuth, you're wrong.

Somebody with balls

[roman_mir]

Good for the judge. AFAIC all patents and copyrights must be abolished, the less government intervention in the economy the healthier the economy is. Today government is involved in every aspect of economy and we can see the outcomes.

The judge is commenting appropriately

[FellowConspirator]

Several have lambasted the judge for making the statement that he doesn't believe that software patents are necessary, saying that he should confine himself to making judgements on matters of law. However, it's important that a judge make such statements if he observes in the execution of his duties that the application of the law and precedent is not serving the purpose for which it was enacted, or is adversely affecting the court's ability to perform its duty (e.g., something precipitates a flood of lengthy but pointless lawsuits that clog the courts and defer hearing of more substantive cases).

It's precisely this feedback which should be informing legislators and prosecutors on how to reform legislation and prioritize enforcement efforts.

In the case of software patents, there's quite a bit of legal, historical, and practical arguments as to why software patents should not exist (at least in the form that device patents do), but there's been very little formal challenge to the idea, and the USPTO and the courts are substantially and adversely impacted by it (not to mention the industry).

Re:As much as I agree, that's not the task of a ju

[captainpanic]

If you put it like that, you have a good point (sorry, can't mod you up).
I read it as if the judge proposed to change the law so that software no longer falls under the patent law.

I read the article again, and it's still not clear to me which of the two is the case here.

Re:As a software programmer

[Zaphod The 42nd]

As a software programmer, I think you're loony, and you haven't been paying attention to how dangerous these patents are.

Programmers in Europe are now refusing to sell their software in the US. Why? It would cost them LITERALLY NOTHING to distribute. Its digital. They just have to make the sales, and collect the money.

So why don't they do it? Because they're TERRIFIED of US patents. Its a goddamned nightmare. You're walking blind through a minefield! You spend years of your life on some app, and then find out that because of a tiny patent from 10 years ago that has almost nothing to do with anything, you're about to be sued into oblivion.

Patents are STATE SPONSORED MONOPOLIES. In this day and age, technological advancement is its own reward. Being first to market is enough. You don't need government sponsored monopolies to convince companies to invest in R&D, they're not stupid.

Re:As a software programmer

[MickyTheIdiot]

I disagree. As long as the code isn't copied then if it accomplishes the same goal then who cares.

That's the way the market is *supposed* to work.

Re:As a software programmer

[Zaphod The 42nd]

Just look at the situation with patents.

Is it small indie developers coming up with genius ideas and getting patents to protect themselves from the big guys?

NO. NOT AT ALL.

What we have here is a world where grad students sell their patent ideas for dirt to companies like IBM and Micorosoft because they have no money and nobody's heard of them.

Then those companies turn around and sue each other to oblivion. Its nothing to do with fairness, its just a legal war.

And that's the BEST SCENARIO. Usually, the companies with the patents are just patent trolls who HAVE NEVER EVEN RELEASED A PRODUCT, and have ZERO intention to do so. They literally just buy patents to sit on them and then sue other people who use those ideas.

That is absolutely COUNTER to progress. Patents are actually STIFLING CREATIVITY!!!
Weren't they supposed to PROTECT CREATIVITY?!?!?!?

Re:As much as I agree, that's not the task of a ju

[Zaphod The 42nd]

And if a judge wants to consider that several patents are overreaching the patent law, or wants to consider the interpretation of the law, he can.

You don't know the first thing about the law system, don't go telling judges what to do. Seriously.

IANAL, and neither are you. Come back when you get a law degree, and then tell me what judges can and can't do.

Fundamental Patent Reform Idea

[scorp1us]

For any patent to be granted a list of expenses in developing the patent is also submitted. Then they have patent protection for 10x the expenses in revenue. They will submit an annual report, and any kind of falsification will have the patent terminated. The people who want to use the patent for free will verify the reports to find any falsification. For devices that integrate multiple patents they are allowed to be summed accordingly on a prorated basis.

This way, there is still incentive to do the R&D, because you'll be able to get multiples of your investment back. But the world gets your patents potentially sooner. If you want to delay the world from getting your patents, then set your prices very low, so ti take a long time to recover them, . Or set your prices high and move onto the next thing. This way everyone wins. They either get really cheap inventions or the patent protection runs out fast. It's a great balance.

This not only fixes drug patents but software patents too, as most software patents would only costs thousands to develop and would get paid 10x back in a very short time.

Re:Fundamental Patent Reform Idea

[Just Some Guy]

For any patent to be granted a list of expenses in developing the patent is also submitted. Then they have patent protection for 10x the expenses in revenue.

You can make that way simpler: let the applicant state the patent's value, and make the limit a multiple of that value. Of course, that's also the value their state should use to assess property taxes on it.

Re:As a software programmer

[HeckRuler]

if I write an amazing piece of software that nobody has seen before and some big company comes and makes a totally ripped off clone, I'd be pissed and that'd be unfair.

And even with a patent you probably wouldn't see a dime. They have money and you don't. They can win court cases that take a decade to resolve. You can't. The best you can hope for is to sell your patent for a pittance to a company in the business of suing people.

And let's say you do make something really novel and innovative and useful, like generic object recognition, then that's great. But once competitors make their own object recognition software, how do you know they're using your code, your algorithm, and your patent? The idea of object recognition isn't patentable. Once it's known that it's possible, you'll attract a lot of talent to the problem. They'll come up with their own ideas about how to solve it. Maybe even doing better than you.

But if you can make innovative advances in AI, maybe you should be working for a software company that can utilize that code rather than trying to sell dot's bargain AI components out of your garage.

Re:As much as I agree, that's not the task of a ju

[Anonymous Coward]

A judge should check whether someone acts within the limits set by the law. A judge shouldn't be publicly trying to change the laws, just like a politician should not try to get involved in a court case to get someone convicted.

Still, I agree that our patent system is over-used, and it seems that it often inhibits innovation instead of facilitate it.

Yes, this is exactly right. In this particular case, Judge Posner repeated ignored both the law and legal precedence to make his rulings. In many of those rulings, he stated that the Federal Circuit was wrong, was stupid, etc.

First of all, the Federal Circuit was created specifically to have appellate jurisdiction over things like intellectual property cases in the United States and has been around for 30 years as well. Second, this is the first software patent case Judge Posner has ever seen. Third and perhaps most important, if either Apple or Motorola/Google appeal any of the rulings in the case, the appeals will be heard by the Federal Circuit! That's right, the Federal Circuit will have to decide whether the Federal Circuit is stupid and wrong.

This case would have been done last month and will now drag on for years. It will waste taxpayer money and it will waste Apple/Motorola/Google money.

Nice job, Judge Posner.

The fall of software patents (fraud) is getting ..

[3seas]

.... closer!!!

There are some things you cannot patent: Physical Phenomenon, Natural Law, Abstract ideas. And of these also mathematical algorithms.
All these are what software is of and then there is the identified physics of abstraction: http://abstractionphysics.net/pmwiki/index.php
It even inspired a known movie trilogy "The Matrix" http://threeseas.net/vicprint/VIC-basic.html only you can't kill off the crew or ship in real life and of course Smith loses because he has no choice but to realize he being the second of three agents of Input, Processing and Output, ..... is himself made up of the ship and crew. Interesting how the Oracle and Morpheus were the only survivors from the original considering what the represent in the world of abstraction. Simply put, it is we who create our world of abstractions that constrain what the users of that world can do..... out of all that is possible. see concept #3 http://threeseas.net/vicprint/vic-concepts.html

The point is: Software Patents are acts of fraud. And maybe that is a hard thing for the courts to accept, considering it was one of their's who started this mess of software patents in the U.S. In some back alley courtroom decision.

Recusal bait

[tepples]

when he's not behind the bench, he's offering critical opinion of existing law

Posner's critical opinions could be used by patent maximalists to show bias in an attempt to force Posner to recuse himself.

Re:Recusal bait

[tepples]

federal judges make their own decision about whether they should recuse themselves from any case

You are correct that I don't know how the Supreme Court chooses which appeals to take in cases alleging an appellate judge's bias.

Re:Recusal bait

[tepples]

What sort of sanctions are imposed against a judge who builds up a track record of doing things that lead to successful appeals abnormally often?

Re:As much as I agree, that's not the task of a ju

[GungaDan]

"I'm surprised no one has shone the spotlight on Obama appointee SCOTUS justice Elena Kagan for not recusing herself from the Obamacare case."

Or good ole worthless Clarence Thomas (whose wife lobbied professionally against the ACA), right?

Orphan drugs - a lot of good work out there

[us7892]

Some companies (Genzyme is one example) do a lot of work in the orphan-drug area. Diseases that inflict small portions of the world population. Indeed, rare conditions.

These are often very expensive drugs, since the market is small, they often cost a patient tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars per year for the rest of their lives. These drugs often get extra patent protections and fast-tracking to the market.

These drugs are not created by accident.

Re:Orphan drugs - a lot of good work out there

[Dunbal]

Doesn't get away from the fact that you are using a rare, extreme case as an argument to try to justify your position.

Helping people?

[dutchwhizzman]

Most of what drug companies make doesn't really help people, it just has a statistically proven effect to lessen some of the symptoms of some disease. I'm not saying all medication is snake oil, but the more promotion a medicine needs, the less it usually helps people or fills a niche that is not already filled by other medications. I think that most of the promotion money spent by big pharma is actually to promote medication that already has competitive products that are just as functional, or for medication that does not really cure anything important.

Re:Speachless.

[VGPowerlord]

"speachless"? Like, there's a fruit called a speach, and you have none?

Clearly it was a typo.

He meant he's peachless.

Color me impressed.

[detain]

This judge is realizing some of the very real problems with our patent system. Pinch me i must be sleeping. It would take alot more than 1 judge realizing there is a problem for anything to ever be done about it but this is a good step. If this judge was able to realize this, then whats wrong with all the other judges that havent?

Re: As much as I agree, that's not the task of a

[rosciol]

Normally that would be true, but if a law is being used to abuse the legal system, then it becomes the problem of the judge. Corporate warfare is not supposed to be conducted in public courts.

Bilski v. Kappos

[tepples]

Personally, I think it would be best for both sides if someone took this issue to the Supreme court and got it decided.

I don't think the Supreme Court likes to issue rulings that are broader than necessary. Look at how little guidance came from Bilski .

Re:As much as I agree, that's not the task of a ju

[VGPowerlord]

To my knowledge, Congress never passed any laws regarding software being patentable. As such, as a bunch of mathematical algorithms, they shouldn't be... but we never stopped it back in the 80s/90s when companies started filing patents on software, so here they are now.

So, literally, this would be reaffirming something that was already decided (math can't be patented).

Re:As a software programmer

[VGPowerlord]

In short: as a programmer you are probably constantly "ripping off" hundreds of patent holders with every program you write. Unless you plan on going into the patent trolling business, it's unlikely that your one hypothetical patent will ever give you more benefit than the liabilities you have due to other people's patents.

On a point closer to home:

If we had granted Software Patents in the 1980s like we do today, there would be no OSX (Apple sued out of existence by Xerox), Windows (Microsoft sued out of existence by Digital Research and/or Xerox), or Linux (sued out of existence by AT&T).

Re:As a software programmer

[fl!ptop]

using patents the way you want limits the software industry by saying only this company can make any kind of a software that does this

Not really. What is says is, "This company can make any kind of software that does this, and any other company must license it from the 1st company."

Until the patent expires, of course.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:As a software programmer

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting AC for obvious reasons.

I write code as a PhD researcher in biomedicine and biomedical imaging. I have several implementations that are dramatically faster than existing packages, and others which have never been implemented (including some really useful file I/O which currently there are no open source options to interface with). My lab/institution would even be OK with me contributing my work, after publication, to various open source projects. I did my homework.

Sadly, I'm based in the US and I know far too much about patent law. I can't contribute my code without fear of being sued because I used a particular registration method to combine MR and PET data, or I used Python for analysis of a particular disorder, or put a scroll bar in a simple GUI, or something else completely asinine.

Without this crap, I'd be perfectly happy to contribute. But not in the current climate. Not a chance.

Re:As a software programmer

[the eric conspiracy]

> NO. NOT AT ALL.

Common misconception. There are actually quite a few cases like this.

You can start by looking up Zoomracks.

Re:As a software programmer

[nightstar007]

The odds that you would create something that isn't already covered by some one else's patent are pretty low. As someone else mentioned, copyright is all you need. I'm pretty sure it would cost you a lot of money and time to even patent your "amazing" software. So now, that big company would not only steal your software anyway since they are bigger than you and have millions of patents already that you do not... but would also probably come and sue you for infringing their patents. At least with copyright if you didn't know about someone else's design, you won't be willfully infringing, but you can't just say "I didn't mean to infringe your patent" like you can with copyrights.

Re:As much as I agree, that's not the task of a ju

[Nadaka]

Did Elena Kagan write "Obamacare"?

Was her only conflict of interest having been appointed by the same guy who was president when it passed?

That isn't even remotely a conflict of interest and nothing even remotely sufficient to even hint at recusing for.

Stop drinking the koolaid.

Judges are citizens; it is the role of a citizen

[DragonWriter]

A judge should check whether someone acts within the limits set by the law. A judge shouldn't be publicly trying to change the laws

In the US system, you don't stop being a citizen when you become a judge.

Clearly, judges should not adjudicate cases based on their preferred policy outcomes in place of the laws in force, but it makes no sense to argue that judges shouldn't publicly advocate for changes to the law.

just like a politician should not try to get involved in a court case to get someone convicted.

A judge publicly advocating for a change in the law isn't analogous to a politician intefering in the operation of a legal case to produce a conviction. Its more the legislative analog of an elected legislator filing a civil lawsuit for damages in a court -- its someone who has an official position in one branch of government relating to another branch of government in exactly the way every citizen is entitled to under the law.

Government != creative research

[bradley13]

Ok, let's get the exceptions out of the way first: Manhattan Project. Apollo. Maybe a couple of others.

The government can, in rare circumstances, put together a creative team and get the hell out of the way. It works, briefly. However, in the end, the bureaucracy eats the soul of the scientist. Look at what happened to NASA: It is now many times the size it was in the 1960s, and is completely incapable of replicating its own successes of 40 years ago.

Imagine the government doing pharmaceutical research. Maybe it would start off well, but within a few years all you will have is yet another monstrous bureaucracy filled with mediocre scientists.

Maybe the profit motive looks ugly to you, but it's the best tool we have. If you will forgive me for borrowing from Winston Churchill: Capitalism is probably the worst way to run a society, except for all the others that have been tried.

Re:As a software programmer

[Exrio]

they're not stupid.

Well, many of the ones that are pushing for patents/copyright/IP *are* stupid...

Re:As a software programmer

[Zaphod The 42nd]

Agreed, although while patent law stays the way it is, its impossible for a major company to ignore patents. They're forced to fight fire with fire. Your competitors sure as hell are going to use patents.

IBM keeps coming out year after year saying "hey guys, we need to stop with the patents, this is getting ridiculous"

And yet, year after year, they keep breaking their own records for most patents filed.

Analogy fail

[DeadCatX2]

Show me the patent that a farmer has on tomatoes, potatoes, corn, or any other food. Maybe Monsanto has patents on seeds, but food itself is not patented and anyone can grow it.

Drugs are not the same. Patents are used to prevent competition that would allow the free market to set the price for drugs at a level where there are people who can no longer afford the drug.

Re:As a software programmer

[Exrio]

I agree with all the points you made, I was merely pointing out the reason this fire is self-sustaining, just as you observed.

I'll show you profit from other people's pain

[DeadCatX2]

You seem to misunderstand what people like me mean when we say "profiting from others pain" - while your pain is relieved, the profit premium can make drugs unaffordable to some others. If you could afford the drug without profit, but cannot afford it with profit, then Big Pharma is profiting from your pain.

Consider the case in India regarding a compulsory license for a kidney and liver cancer drug.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120312/02424818071/putting-lives-before-patents-india-says-pricey-patented-cancer-drug-can-be-copied.shtml

"For the first time since re-instating patents on pharmaceuticals, India has granted just such a compulsory license, covering a kidney and liver cancer drug marketed under the name Nexavar. Indian generic drug company Natco requested a license, noting that Nexavar was in short supply in India and exceptionally expensive. A typical dosage costs around $70,000 per year in India -- something Bayer says is necessary to recoup the drug's R&D costs. However, reports show that it cost less than $300 million to develop this drug (not to mention that the US government subsidized the process) and Bayer has already made billions selling the drug around the world."

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120523/03175119032/generics-drive-down-drug-prices-india-tpp-trying-to-stop-that.shtml

"Cipla, another Indian manufacturer of generics, has announced that it too is coming out with a version of Nexavar, pricing it at $125 for 120 tablets. That's even cheaper than Natco's price of $163, to say nothing of Bayer's $5,128 for the same course."

5128 / 125 = 41.024. That means that Bayer was charging over 41 times as much for a drug that had already recouped all development costs multiple times over.

Tell me with a straight face that Bayer is not trying to profit from kidney and liver cancer at the expense of treating people who are sick.

It may be a problem...

[SwashbucklingCowboy]

... but it's a policy problem that should be solved be the legislative and executive branches, not the judicial branch.

Why dissolve? Just de-monopolize

[betterunixthanunix]

Generic drugs are almost always cheaper than name brands. Drop the patents, let the NIH and NSF fund drug research (and drop the war on drugs crap too -- let researchers have the freedom to research drugs without having to worry about political correctness or right-wing drug policies), and let pharmaceutical companies produce the drugs that researchers discover in a competitive market. It is not that markets have no place at all here, it is that research should not be market-driven.

Re:As a software programmer

[pijokela]

Offer the thing as SaaS.

Seriously, just a few months ago I heard of some tiny company that had developed a routing algorithm that figures more efficient routes for delivery trucks. They offer it as SaaS. That way the algorithm is on their servers only.

Re:Uh...

[tragedy]

I don't think the original poster was saying that people should be forced to work for free. I'm pretty sure the idea was that the people who do the actual R&D should be paid with public money and that all the layers of upper management, the shareholders and the people working in the departments in the pharmaceutical companies who don't directly support the R&D shouldn't be paid (at least, they should find other ways to be paid). In the long run, one way or the other, pretty much everyone needs to pay the cost of this research, so it seems best if they pay it without all that overhead.

Re:As a software programmer

[RightSaidFred99]

Life isn't "fair". Patents aren't to make things fair, they're meant to stoke inventions by providing an incentive.

There's plenty of benefit inherent to writing some "amazing piece of software" first, and enough people are doing it that there is no societal benefit from providing patent protections (you already have copyright) for software.

So no soup for you.

Re:The fall of software patents (fraud) is getting

[Just Some Guy]

Tim, I love ya, guy. Someday I truly hope to understand what you mean.

These people forget that they are not lawmakers

[Stan92057]

These people forget that they are not lawmakers they are judges their job is to make judgements based on LAWS not feeling. Any judgement he makes for cases of patents he must excuse himself he is biased. He has a complaint write a congressman just like we have to do.

Re:As a software programmer

[Optic7]

Here's one that just happened a couple of months ago: http://peregrinelabs.com/2012/04/to-our-us-customers/ - it's an European 3d hair and fur program that is no longer going to be sold in the US because of a patent dispute. You can also read a whole 140+ posts long forum thread about this situation including the patent holder defending himself, here: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=59&t=1048283&page=1&pp=15

I just happened to know this example of exactly what the GP post mentioned because I frequent the CGSociety forum. I imagine from what GP said that there are probably many other examples.

Re:As a software programmer

[Optic7]

Reposting this at a higher level, since I posted as a response to an AC below you.

It's a very recent example of exactly what you mention:

http://peregrinelabs.com/2012/04/to-our-us-customers/ and here is a long forum thread discussing it, including posts by the patent holder: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=59&t=1048283&page=1&pp=15

In my view it's clear to see how this kind of thing has a stifling effect on innovation, business, and the economy of the US, but I suppose some do not share that view.

Re:As much as I agree, that's not the task of a ju

[glitchvern]

A judge should check whether someone acts within the limits set by the law. A judge shouldn't be publicly trying to change the laws, just like a politician should not try to get involved in a court case to get someone convicted.

Normally, I'd agree with this sentiment, but I think it's important to remember that software patents were more or less created by the judiciary not the legislature. They are not found in statute. The patent office only started granting them because they lost too many court cases telling them they had to. Algorithms are math and math is not suppose to be patentable.

Wonderful, 80% pharma bullshit

[bryan1945]

I love how 1 comment can cause the article's comment to be redirected. Freaking Fox News stays more on topic that /. anymore, and I hate Fox News.

Re:Wonderful, 80% pharma bullshit

[bryan1945]

And before anyone tells me to stop coming here or whatever- fuck you, I clicked on something to read about, not have 6 wankers fighting back and forth about the minutiae of which grasshopper species has the longer legs in a legal article.