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Comment by fangorn | Hacker News Reader

Sure, but: "Florey had not patented penicillin, having been advised [...] that doing so would be unethical"[0].

Anyone else immediately thought: "OK, but they patented it, and the spin off company will presumably licence the tech for exorbitant sums, should it ever reach that phase of course, so it'll just be another expensive 1st world thing. No money? Bite the dust."?

And yeah, I know, patents encourage inventions and promote discoveries, we're all the better for their existence, they are literally the best thing since, well, invention of sliced bread.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#Mass_production

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Pretty sure that government could just buy a patent like this at a price that they choose. Some countries might choose to do that, some might not.

Also, patents expire after only 21 years. They have patented this molecule now, but they haven't actually got a treatment as yet, meaning that the clock is ticking.

I don't know if you can copyright a molecule?

Isn't there also the mirror molecule thing they can do to imitate patented ones?

Not necessarily, see Thalidomide for example:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/02/160208124237.h...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isomer#Medicinal_chemistry

US patent law states that "compositions of matter" (i.e., drug molecules) are patentable.

To be fair, any physical device, like a printing press, is also a "composition of matter".

I'm pretty sure that there will be reverse engineered generics with another name tag for 1/100th of the original price.

You can't sell the same molecule if they have a patent. It's not about reverse engineering.

China and their lax patent "laws" would like to have a word with you.

It would still be illegal to import those generics into the US. Probably doubly so, since the FDA wouldn't be inspecting said generic drug manufacturers.

>And yeah, I know, patents encourage inventions and promote discoveries, we're all the better for their existence, they are literally the best thing since, well, invention of sliced bread.

"There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?"

No, patents pretty much only enrich someone at the expense of everyone else. Without patents and copyright we could progress much faster. Look how fast China caught up. It's not becaue they respected intellectual property, I can tell you that.

And what are you dedicating your life to research and development for no pay now, or ever?

Why no pay? Copyright and patents are a pretty new invention in history. Money isn't. Just look how Hollywood developed in the early years by escaping from this whole copyright thing.

And who would pay you to create something new that they could not profit from?

That's why.

Why wouldn't they be able to profit from it? Didn't humanity profit immensely from creations before intellectual property was invented some three hundred years ago? Like with ships. Or windmills. You're not seriously suggesting people weren't able to profit from their creations prior to intellectual property? Or even that people nowadays necessarily have the ability to profit from their own creations, when in reality everyone who isn't a big company just gets bullied with lawsuits until the comply. Lawsuits can ruin you, even if you're in the right.

I can't tell if you're just trolling me now. Three hundred years ago the world was a completely different place.

We didn't have labor and environmental arbitrage like we do now. One could email IP to someone in China who can mass produce it, with lower quality, lower costs, higher environmental impact and ship it across the Pacific a month later.

300 years ago, if someone stole your windmill design and took it to china, you'd never know.

> No, patents pretty much only enrich someone at the expense of everyone else. Without patents and copyright we could progress much faster. Look how fast China caught up.

While there is a decent argument to make here, this isn't it. Obviously a lack of IP protection makes it easier to copy what already exists ("catching up"). The question is whether it makes it easier to develop what doesn't exist yet.

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