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Comment by nickpinkston | Hacker News Reader

TL;DR:

[Getting China to adopt a patent system in harmony with Western systems will lead to A LOT of frivolousness as the system already has bad incentives / outcomes.

Also, patents should be removed for rapidly changing industries (i.e. software), but should be retained for long term plays (bio-tech, industrial processes, etc.)]

I'll completely agree that China shouldn't follow our lead, and that we should remove software patents. However, I'd go further and say that we probably would have faster moving bio-tech, etc. industries if we forced more competition by NOT GRANTING them government monopolies to commercialize a technology (i.e. patent).

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Your second and third paragraphs appear to be in conflict re bio-tech unless "faster moving" doesn't trump any negative side effects of removing patents. Can you elaborate?

I can see the argument for patents in areas like biotech where there's a huge up front cost in development and testing. But if the cost is really all in testing, then I think patents should be removed.

Additionally, I think patents should be much shorter since I believe returns/earnings on monopoly power today can be much greater than it was back when the patent duration was established.

I think bio-tech is VERY fat right now. There was a 2005 study of new drugs submitted for patent - I believe it was something like: 7 out of 80 were curing new diseases or improved ways of treating current one. The others being "me-too" drugs trying to get around patents - this means that the majority of research is actually going towards getting around others' patents - what a waste of resources!

Oh yea - who made those 7 drugs? All publicly funded (NSF/NIH) through universities. So who's incentives are these patents helping?

I think we should selectively subsidize the FDA approval process so we can commercialize drugs for real diseases. I'm fine with companies submitting vanity drugs (Latisse for eyelashes or something), but they have to pay full price.

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