This is critical. Not just to enable expensive investment, but to create an incentive structure that encourages scientific research that remains in the public domain. This is a critical point that people often miss in these arguments.
In computerland, we don't come up with new computer science every time we program an application. In pharmaceutical land, you literally have to come up with new science to make a new drug.
Let's not forget that, as software developers, our perspective and opinions on patents are not fungible across all domains.
The patent system in the pharmaceutical industry enables a healthy drug research and design market with proper incentive structures. Abolishing patents in the pharmaceutical industry would retard research, skew incentives, and encourage trade secrets.
A patent free system would most likely result in a system of trade secrecy. Companies would not share their results, they would keep the secret formula to themselves. It would result in perpetual proprietary lockdowns.
After all, why make public the concept that you just spent billions of dollars and years of opportunity cost on? So that competitors can manufacture the drug at essentially zero cost? Nah, we'll just keep that to ourselves, thank you very much.
Trade secrets are a threat to science.
You cannot build a foundation of science on a platform eaten away by trade secrecy. Trade secrecy will deprive humanity of the positive externalities of a significant chunk of pharmaceutical research.
As developers, we see patents as a threat. A sharp implement of the greedy. In the pharmaceutical world, patents are a necessary rung in the ladder of human advancement. Yes, it doesn't always feel good to climb this ladder (consumer drug prices) but without it- there would just be a scrum of companies scrambling to climb up the research pole, each trampling each other's investment returns (incentive) to zero. They'd get bruised and go find easier poles to climb up.
Yes, the patent system in the pharmaceutical industry has flaws. But it is the best thing we have given the alternatives.
If you are interested, please see see my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7497872