People will remember. A decade or two ago, during a flu outbreak that had pandemic potential (I think it was 2006), the government of Indonesia refused to share early samples. The reason? In the past, vaccine manufacturers had refused to sell flu vaccine during pandemics at a discount to the developing country.
From a game-theoretic viewpoint it makes sense - Indonesia isn't worse off if it refuses to cooperate, Indonesian citizens will die anyway. Israel calls this stance "Samson Option".
Say you're a toilet paper maker. In normal times => "your product is trivial to produce, why are you charging so much" => razor-thin margins => almost no profit. In crisis => "why are you thinking about profit" => razor-thin margins => almost no profit.
Meanwhile, you have politicians and multinationals evading tax, landlords and universities exploiting naive & vulnerable populations, Uber & Facebook skirting legislation and making bank, CEOs getting away with billions after burning $50B, elites raping kids and getting away with it, ... real "social responsibility".
That doesn't mean it has to be privately funded with an arbitrarily large profit margin, though. In much of the world, we publicly fund some research, we fund quite a lot of medical research through charitable organisations as well, and we operate largely centralised public or at least semi-public healthcare services that buy the end results of the successful research at reasonable rates because of their huge negotiating power.
I think a lot of people from the US who have never been abroad for an extended period might not even realise how far behind normal standards the US really is in terms of how it manages its medical research and healthcare provision. People in much of the world really would assume you were joking if you said someone could go bankrupt just because they were unlucky and got sick, or that vital treatments that could save many lives might be withheld just because of profits.
Ironically, this is one of the main issues that torpedoed a US-EU trade deal not that long ago after many years of negotiations, probably at considerable economic cost to both parties. The general issue of excessive patent rights, and some national issues in member states such as the NHS being the "third rail" of UK politics, turned out to be deal-breakers.
Beyond that, these are extraordinary circumstances. There will be plenty of bailouts and stimulus for you to scale your business model when the dust settles; let’s focus on scaling our response and systems to meet this crisis first shall we?
Not having to have a working _product_ is actually sensible IMO: maybe patent terms should be limited in such situations (half perhaps).
If I invent a new space rocket, how am I going to keep it quiet, as a small time inventor, long enough to get funding, and build the rocket (we're looking at 1000s of NDAs and warding off an entire rocket production facility from public view) ... do I then have to submit it for testing to make sure it conforms to the invention the patent was applied for? Maybe that requires dismantling it, or witnessing it in operation in an extra-terrestrial planets atmosphere (Mars landing capability, say) ... it's just not workable to require an embodiment to be produced.
Aside: most countries have utility or design patents that protect actual products, but these are in addition to technology patents because working around a single embodiment or design is relatively easy to do, working around a mode of operation is not.
Patent applications are already supposed to be enabling disclosures, that is guides to the skilled person in that field which would enable them to work the invention. This requirement has maybe slipped a bit; but in the US8283155 patent in question they seem to give reasonable information about the operation and scope of their idea [it's not my field].
Just my personal opinion.
Weird things like software patents and ludicrously long copyrights aside, the notion of IP has worked out decently for us. There's no way it's more important than directly saving human lives though.
Maybe, but I'd argue that the problem was granting IP rights too strong in the first place. Patents are, in principle, a useful incentive for R&D, but when the products of that R&D are medical in nature, the ethics of allowing them to be withheld become very shaky. In particular, granting patents that allow R&D organisations to recover the true overall cost of their work and make a sufficient profit to justify the endeavour is one thing, but granting patents that allow monopoly providers to set arbitrarily high costs on essential treatments is another thing entirely.
And before anyone suggests that there is no alternative to keep that research going, consider that typically it is not actually the researchers who are raking in those big profits. It is entirely possible that a centrally funded public research service that hired the same experts and provided the same labs and then used its own or external manufacturing facilities for mass production would work out more cost effective for a centralised healthcare system than the current way things work particularly in the US.
Though arguably if a company went ahead and leaped into action and saved millions of lives, when the patent holder didn't lift a finger. There is some debate on whether or not that should be punished and how that should be handled.
We need MASSIVE patent reform and to put a end to patent trolls like the one in the story
Patent trolls are nothing but Net-negative for society.
How is it ethical to let a debate about compensation, which can be had in the future, stop you from saving lives you can save, today? Especially when you're the state and it's literally your job.
Trying to prevent a coronavirus test being used because someone might owe you license fees for which you'll sue in court is plainly murder.
I think a lawyer arguing that should be at minimum disbarred, and possibly jailed, at least like someone who was violating quarantine and trying to infect people on purpose.
"If I don't make money from it, I won't bother to help save lives."
We can do without you. Even if you're medicine's Einstein and Edison rolled up together, we'll do without you.
Solves both problems.