Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
So you're going to throw out the patent system and replace it with... what, exactly? Would you rather return to the "good old days" when everything was kept secret, and peoples' inventions died with them, or would you advocate that nobody had any rights to their inventions?
Where would be the incentive for drugs companies to spend billions on developing new drugs, if their was no patent protection, and their rivals could just copy and manufacture the drugs for pennies?
Please do explain your ideas!
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The incentive comes from being first in the market. It takes more than just 'pennies' to retool a factory. And, of course, there is our old friend advertising which dupes the gullible into thinking that 'authentic' 'genuine' aspirin is better than the 'generic' brands. Pharmaceutical companies will not simply stop producing because patent protections are stripped and even if they did they would be replaced by other organizations looking to exploit new openings in the market. As for R and D, leave it to the publicly funded universities. We might actually even get a more rational distribution of research funds that way.