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Warp wrote:
> In the European patenting system (at least in principle) you cannot
> restrict what people do. The only thing the patent restricts is selling
> of the patented products.
I see. Yes, the American patent system is more restrictive than that. You
can still build the stuff yourself, but only for research purposes. (Your
guess is as good as mine as to when you cross from research to commercial
use. :-)
> Those are, of course, quite extreme cases.
Actually, I'm pretty sure the one with the laser pointer was done as a means
of showing how stupid the patent system has gotten. :-)
> Being able to patent eg. a method for vulcanizing rubber is completely
> akin to being able to patent a food recipe.
So can you patent chemicals, like drugs? How do you pay for the R&D that
goes into something like a method for making a particular drug if you can't
charge more than it costs to manufacture?
Something like 1/2 to 2/3'rds of the cost of a CPU is paying for the
development of the first batch. I would be surprised if it wasn't at least
as expensive to develop and test drugs.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Insanity is a small city on the western
border of the State of Mind.
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Warp wrote:
> I can understand why an American would be surprised about such a thing,
> even though I'm a bit surprised they would be surprised (tautology not
> intended).
Because some things take a huge amount of resource to develop yet are
relatively inexpensive to manufacture. Why would I spend 20 years developing
a cure for cancer if the actual cost of manufacturing the final drug is $10
a dose? That's kind of exactly what patents are aimed at: encouraging
development by protecting the profits long enough to pay back the R&D.
It just seems like it would be bad for business. Worse than the cluster-fk
that's the current American patent system? Hard to say. But we already have
things like substances which are very cheap and *seem* to do very well at
curing a wide variety of cancers inexpensively that nobody is researching
because you can't earn back the research costs by selling it.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Insanity is a small city on the western
border of the State of Mind.
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Darren New wrote:
> Something like 1/2 to 2/3'rds of the cost of a CPU is paying for the
> development of the first batch. I would be surprised if it wasn't at
> least as expensive to develop and test drugs.
I would suggest that testing drugs is *absurdly* expensive. (Having seen
some of what's involved, as that is my line of work...)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> I would suggest that testing drugs is *absurdly* expensive.
Sure. And so is designing a CPU and everything it takes to mass produce one.
The point I'm making is that manufacturing a drug might be quite cheap,
once you figure out what works.
Sort of like mass-producing software, once you get the first version running.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Insanity is a small city on the western
border of the State of Mind.
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>> I would suggest that testing drugs is *absurdly* expensive.
>
> Sure. And so is designing a CPU and everything it takes to mass produce
> one. The point I'm making is that manufacturing a drug might be quite
> cheap, once you figure out what works.
Indeed. Depends how you make the drug, of course, but it certainly pales
into insignificance beside the cost of testing it.
[It seems that drugs which you can make just by mixing some chemicals
together are a lot cheaper than ones where you have to actually *grow*
something and extract the chemical, for example.]
> Sort of like mass-producing software, once you get the first version
> running.
That too.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Darren New <dne### [at] san rrcom> wrote:
> So can you patent chemicals, like drugs?
To be honest: I don't know. They aren't devices per se, but they aren't
algorithms either.
--
- Warp
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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Why would I spend 20 years developing
> a cure for cancer if the actual cost of manufacturing the final drug is $10
> a dose?
Many scientists do their job for reasons other than to get rich,
you know... (I'd go as far as to say that if you want to get rich, or
even a moderate salary, you don't want to be a scientist. Science is
a vocation.)
--
- Warp
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090603224807259
>
> Why is it that I find myself thinking this will have precisely zero
> effect on anything?
>
Because this warning:
"Novelists or journalists would be unable to write stories unless their
publishers had permission from the owners of the words."
is not a warning to a government official, but rather, and enticement.
"Hey, let's make *ourselves* the owners of the words!"
Regards,
John
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On 27-6-2009 18:27, Darren New wrote:
> (Your guess is as good as mine as to when you cross from research to
> commercial use. :-)
Ask the whales.
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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Why would I spend 20 years developing
>> a cure for cancer if the actual cost of manufacturing the final drug is $10
>> a dose?
>
> Many scientists do their job for reasons other than to get rich,
Certainly. But would you do it for free? And could you convince all the
manufacturers of the equipment you needed to buy to do it for free? And the
folks who own the hospital where you do the trials, do they decide they'll
rent you their space for 20 years?
I'd be an astronaut for free, too. But I wouldn't mine the ore for the
steel/aluminum/whatever for the space shuttle for free.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Insanity is a small city on the western
border of the State of Mind.
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