[778] in libertarians
Re: Intellectual property rights
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Travis Corcoran)
Mon Feb 27 17:04:57 1995
Date: Mon, 27 Feb 95 16:48:16 EST
From: tjic@ICD.Teradyne.COM (Travis Corcoran)
To: libertarians@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <9502272110.AA27575@blizzard.lcs.mit.edu> (message from Raymie Stata on Mon, 27 Feb 95 16:10:52 EST)
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> From: Raymie Stata <raymie@larch.lcs.mit.edu>
> Date: Mon, 27 Feb 95 16:10:52 EST
>
>
> > Kevin writes:
> >
> > [Drug company D spends billions to develop a new product and takes
> > not steps to protect itself from competition. Sure enough, a
> > competitor swoops in and takes advantage of D, and D goes out of biz
> > because it can't recoup the billions.]
> >
> > Fair?
>
> Fair? Yes. Smart? No.
>
> Protecting your biz from competition is part of doing biz. Patent
> laws have just allowed the drug market to avoid structuring itself
> around this fact of biz. In industries in which companies cannot use
> patent laws as an absolute shield against competition the way drug
> companies can (eg, computers, cars, overnight delivery, and almost
> everything _but_ drug companies), companies spend billions on R&D yet
> remain competitive. In fact, most agree that spending much on R&D is
> _necessary_ to remaining competitive.
Computer companies don't use patent law as an absolute shield, but
they do use it to prevent out-and-out copying of implementation. It
is illegal to build a transistor-level clone of a 486, but it is not
illegal for AMD to do a clean room reverse-engineered clone. I think
this is a reasonable level of protection, and I think it is pretty
much the same between drug companies and computer companies. Thus,
drug company A could make an AIDS drug, and drug company B could try
to make a drug that acts the same way, but can not use the same
(patented) formula.
> How would drug companies get competitive advantages from R&D
> investments? I can't say. If I were such a biz-genius that I
> could think of such things off the top of my head w/out even being
> involved in the industry, I'd be a multi-billionaire by now.
I have a bit of pragmatism in my soul, and if someone presents a
scheme which can be shown to benefit no one, but can be shown to hurt
some people, I'm against it.
The scheme of getting rid of all protection on medecine, etc. would
help people in the short term, as a handful of currently protected
medecines would get much cheaper, but I think it would harm people in
the long run, as many fewer new medecines got produced. As per
standard debating rules, I leave proof that the new scheme would be
better to the proponents of the new scheme.
- --
TJIC (Travis J.I. Corcoran) TJIC@icd.teradyne.com
Member NRA, GOAL
opinions(TJIC) != opinions(employer(TJIC))
"Buy a rifle, encrypt your data, and wait for the Revolution!"
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