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On Friday 11 February 2005 9:55 am, Grant Sewell wrote:
On Fri, 11 Feb 2005 09:33:23 +0000 Henry Bremridge wrote:Once someone comes up with a workable idea: antibiotics, airplanes. Then I agree they need a monopoly to allow them to develop their idea and obtain the rewards. (Lets face it, a drug is "software" for combatting a disease: but one which cost about $1bn to develop and launch on to the market.)Ooohhhh.... I wouldn't mention drugs. That opens up a really big can of worms! The drug company may well have spent $1b to develop the drug, but do they need a monopoly to "allow them to develop their idea"?
The testing of the drug costs the money, prior to marketing. The companies currently do need a monopoly to artificially raise the price of the branded drug above the costs of manufacture to reimburse the development costs. However, there is nothing to say this is the single best solution - it's what we are currently stuck with. If development was funded differently, patents would be unnecessary but then we'd pay some other way. (note: I work with pharmaceutical patents every single day). It is never wise to compare the virtual world of software with models from the physical world. Drugs will always cost money because they consume resources - it is a physical thing, it has mass, it contains atoms and cannot be easily copied. If you have one molecule of aspirin, you can't easily make another - with software, one copy is completely sufficient to create millions of identical copies.
Hasn't the idea already been developed?
And published with the full structure of the molecule, as far as is known.
What about competition? Since the drug is likely to have been actually discovered by someone in the Scientific community - albeit one that is payed by ACMECo - does that mean that their discoveries should be hidden under a blanket of secrecy rather than shown to the rest of the global scientific community?
It's not hidden at all - that's the thing with drug patents, they are not comparable with software because the disclosure IS useful. With software, the source code is rarely described let alone published.
Is it morally right that the company that hired a particular scientist that discovered a method (since that's all science really ever is) should be allowed to guard and hide "their" discovery
They can guard it but they cannot reasonably hide it. The patent is based on publication.
to the possible detriment of other *people* that would have benefited from the method being a publicly disclosed (and therefore others being able to manufacture the drug)?
True - this is the situation now, there's no reason to think that patents on drugs are the best solution we can create.
But, this discussion is about software patents.
Yes, let's keep it there - I don't mind discussing drugs but not on this list. :-)
Grant.
-- Neil Williams ============= http://www.dcglug.org.uk/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/isbnsearch/ http://www.neil.williamsleesmill.me.uk/ http://www.biglumber.com/x/web?qs=0x8801094A28BCB3E3
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