Re:Thought Ownership (Score 1)

Imagine that you have just formulated a brand new drug that cures a rare and deadly disease. You decide to be a humanitarian, and so you release the formula to the world for free (because screw patents, right?). You've done a good thing. Now all of the big pharma companies will scoop it up and start selling it. After all, they got it for free. -- Unfortunately, this is not how things would actually work. In reality, you have just doomed your drug and all of the people who it could have saved. The reason for this is that clinical trials are expensive. Very expensive. This creates a situation where if a company decides to start working to get your drug approved, they are shouldering all of the cost. As soon as it is approved, all of the other drug companies are now also free to produce cheaper generic versions of the same drug since they will not have to recoup the investment costs. A drug that finds itself in this kind of limbo is called an Orphan Drug (link). It is so hard to convince companies to go through the process of exploring drugs which cure rare diseases, that in these cases the government often has to intervene and enhance the patent protection or else nothing would happen. Patents don't just serve as an incentive to innovate. They also allow the owner to write off initial investments that would not otherwise be made.