Yeah, and we both know just how popular "Big Pharm" is with many people. I know it's a propagandist term, but the fact is very few people who haven't thought much about it just see what it costs for their elderly aunt or grandmother to have medicine every month, and they assume "Big Pharm" is the Devil.

Fine, just for yuks, let's say they get 5 years from the date of FDA approval.
No, I don't think that will be enough to solve this particular problem either.

Personally, I'm not sure which side of this "5 year mark" I fall on, particularly since I think there is a "one size fits all" solution. I think this would (eventually) drastically increase the rate of patent application well past the actual new idea rate simply because everyone would be trying to patent not only the finalized idea, but every incremental step leading up to it. Initially this would be a real problem, but eventually this would be mitigated as all the old processes ran out of their patents. While the courts might find far fewer patent cases (compared to the rate of patent grants, anyway), the patent offices themselves would become overwhelmed in a very big way.

Even giving pharmaceutical companies 5 years from FDA approval would have some serious problems though. Now they're trying to regain $40 Million R&D costs - and make a profit - in just 5 years instead of 15 or 20. So now guess what, it's gonna cost 5 times as much for each pill during that time. And because of this, only those very widespread issues will ever be addressed. If you only have 5 years to regain the costs of developing the cure for some rare debilitating disease or condition, you're not going to assume that all 120,000 victims of said problem will be able to come up with $40 Mil in just a short 5 year period. And don't think for a moment that the insurance companies will always cover it. Not until after that 5 year period, anyway.

There are obvious benefits at the individual level and for society as a whole, but there are some pretty tough problems with this idea too. I firmly believe 5 years is perfectly reasonable in some cases, but would cause more strife in others. And I don't think those lines can be strictly drawn along industry lines either.

Like I said, there is no "one size fits all" solution.

Start with the downside:
Inventors and corporations would have to work a lot harder to find that next new idea to get consumers to shell out their cash.
Corporations would still have a leg up on the individual idea hobbyist.
The economy would undergo a massive "adjustment" as corporations burn through their capital, and folks realized what that stock was really worth.
Copyrighted material would not be available to individual artists to fund their retirement, nor to pass on to next of kin.
Pharmaceuticals would be available in generic form much quicker.
Prolific artists (Remember Stephen King and all his pen names?) would hold back some of their work to release in a more steady stream rather than flooding the market (which may also be seen as an upside).

Now the upside:
Inventors and corporations would work a lot harder to find that next new idea to get consumers to shell out their cash.
Consumer cash would buy a lot more goods and entertainment that it currently does.
New ideas and advances would come along much more quickly, after everyone realized they'd been caught flat-footed.
Copyrighted material would experience it's comeback while people still remembered what it was - artists would live to see their own revivals.
Individual inventors would still have an uphill battle with heavy hitting corporations, but they'd at least stand a fighting chance.
Massive drop in patent lawsuits. Why spend billions fighting for something you'll only lose in a few more years anyway?
"Golden Parachutes" would pretty much disappear, as corporate boards realized their economy of scale just got fitted to a much smaller scale.

That's just my speculation. I'm not an economist, lawyer, or inventor, nor am I a patent holder.

Seriously. This is the one post I was looking for to restore my faith in the literacy of the /. crowd ...

As I remember, that was the one story I ready in HS Lit that I actually enjoyed.

Cheers!

I disagree. I'm not trying to discount the real work done by early naturalists and scientists, I'm only pointing out that even they had some very wrong ideas.

I'm not saying I don't have any wrong ideas either. I just happen to think I minimize those wrong ideas by being willing to say I don't know rather than accepting something that doesn't quite pass the BS test, or worse, making it up.

My big hot button is that I think people in this day and age have so much more access to real information and fact, and they still manage to believe the stupidest crap. Just count the bogus urban legend and fake virus emails you get forwarded to you and you'll see the smallest tip of the iceberg.

And I strongly disagree that religion is the best explanation for anything in any circumstance. "I don't know yet" is always a better explanation, except for never. It exhibits the humility many religious folks talk about and so few actually possess, and leaves the question open for some other inquiring mind, rather than putting "case closed" on the subject.

Like I said in another post, it's intellectual laziness.
It's intellectual oppression to boot.

Agreed. It's not science, it's intellectual laziness and a desire to maintain an advantage of some kind by claiming to have all the answers. When an entire community suffers from the same intellectual barriers, it's the first one that provides an answer nobody can argue against, however ridiculous, that gets the upper hand.

No, I don't discount it, I just recognize it for what is is. Insanity or a shameful lack of integrity. Or both.

Did you also read that they were very well versed in those plants and fungi that induced hallucinations? I did.

What a coincidence! Mine too! :D

Just to be clear, I'm not implying you're the town idiot, I meant that comment in a purely hypothetical sense :)

Let's be clear, it's not just "thinking" that started religion, it's uninformed, ignorant thinking that started religion in the first place, and willfully arrogant, uninformed, ignorant thinking that kept it going for so long.

Logical and analytical thinking is putting an end to religion, and it's about bloody (literally) time.

And no, it is not a gift to be simple, it's just being simple. If you want to be the town idiot, you go right ahead, but anybody trying to learn from the town idiot is just trying to be another town idiot.

Not trying to draw the flamers, just posting my view.

Interesting. So they got slammed, and the nancyboy admin decided to 403 that one page. Never seen that response to a slashdot avalanche. I'll dig it up later I suppose.

Oh, by the way, they have LOTS of interesting looking articles from the home page! <evil grin>
Check them out! http://www.datamation.com/

MuaHaHaHa!!

I just know I'm screwing my karma, but what the hell.

Is it just me or did nobody posting here actually read the article?

I know I didn't. Why? Well, the F'n thing is 403'd. How are we supposed to read an article we can't bloody get to?

And since we can't get to this article, are we supposed to just assume there really are 12 ways A is better than B?

And how did this even get posted if the article is no more than a tease?

Sorry for the rant, but I was really wanting to see if there was anything in there I didn't already think of.