Comments on: Liberal Think Tank Says Patents Are Destroying the Planet

By: Gene Quinn

Gene Quinn — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 06:11:04 +0000

Patents do not stifle innovation. No matter how many times that is alleged it will never be accurate.

If you care to understand why see: http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2009/07/16/gates-hurricane-patents-discussed-in-usa-today/id=4594/

The reality is that patents foster innovation by giving incentive to improve upon what has already been invented. Also, because patent require adequate disclosure with respect to how to make and use an invention, innovators are able to stand on the shoulders of those who came before them and build on the innovations of those who preceded them.

-Gene

By: Gene Quinn

Gene Quinn — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 06:04:05 +0000

Carlyle-

Obviously you are not knowledgeable in this area. If you think it is an overstatement to say that it takes millions of dollars to develop a drug you either do not know the facts, or you are choosing to ignore them. The cost of taking a drug from discovery to market is easily into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Even those who are anti-pharma acknowledged that the cost is easily $200 million, some estimates as high as $400 and the pharma industry says it is $900 million or more. Even if the truth lies in the middle, or even closer to the anti-pharma estimates, the cost is extraordinary.

-Gene

By: Carlyle

Carlyle — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 22:28:37 +0000

Also about the millions of dollars to develop drugs that is an extreme overstatemnet. Good drugs are deliberately NOT developed by companies solely for monetary reasons. Instead chemical modifications to already perfect durgs which may be harmful solely for the purpose of patent rights. We need drug development sponsored in universities and public labs where it belongs. A recent very promising Alzheimer drug which has been around for decades as an anti-Histamine was just bought from Russia and half a billion. It it turns out as promising as it sounds like, we will all pay for that buyout in higher costs. It is corruption at its worst. The same can be said for many AIDS drugs. There are plenty of excellent scientists at top universities who do the groundwork anyways. Companies have their place, but their power and money grabs are ridiculous and ruining everything.

By: Carlyle

Carlyle — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 22:20:50 +0000

I disagree with the above comments about personal property and socialism. I think patents “should” be personal property of the creator(s). The problem is patents and copyrights can be bought and sold like stock, can gain unreasonable value, and this is where things go dreadfully wrong, because then rich individuals who have taken no real part in creation can profit from which they did not really contribute to. There is a tremendous degree of stifling of innovation and technology by virtue of patents and copyright. There is also great harm too, in the improper development on medicines and medical devices, because power and money get shifted aways eventually from the creative to the business class, where they do not belong. I feel the only way this is ever going to be solved is only if copyrights and patents are not allowed to be sold only leased for fixed periods by the owners or developers (including companies if they are truly the creators). We all have witnessed tremondous growth and innovation in technologies that have been opensourced (internet, wikipedia, etc.). Can you imagine if a big telecom would have tried to develop the internet….we would have all been charged and it would never have developed to the useful extent it has. Moreover, any company, restaurant chain, etc. who is going to profit from the public, had better make certain that the details of their creation should be public knowlege for their perusal. I don’t want to know any “secret recipe” is going into my kids mouth, before scientists who know something about carcinogens are able to evaluate it. Similarly, biotechnology has developed by leaps and bounds because of free source information, not because of company patents…whereas the development of drugs is riddled with corruption and obfuscation because of pharma big and obtrusive hands, trade secrets, etc. The best solution is that the creation belongs to the creator. When that creator passes on, it should be in the public hands, the same public (educators, parents, friends, and the cutlure at large) who created an environment for that creator to create. It is no socialism, it is respect for good old fashion American individualism and meritocracy.

By: Gene Quinn

Gene Quinn — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:28:44 +0000

Dan-

I don’t know about the dry cleaners, but it is likewise good to hear others understand that global warming is a myth. I have been saying this for years because all the factual historical information is well know, but ignored for a political and social agenda. Over the last couple years they haven’t been able to stop people from reading their own thermometers and noticing the globe is cooling, so they changed their tactics. I knew I was right, as were all the other heretics who refused to believe in global warming, when Al Gore and his chronies stopped calling it global warming and started calling it “climate change.”

We will soon enough hear from them that this is exactly what they predicted. The pseudo-science claimed that eventually higher temperatures would result in lower temperatures. Obviously as a ploy to cover their bases, so whatever happened they would be right.

-Gene

By: Dan Feigelson

Dan Feigelson — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:52:06 +0000

Thanks, Gene. It’s refreshing to know that I’m not the only one who recognizes that, to the extent the earth is warming, man isn’t to blame. And like you, I think the idea of new medicines is pretty cool, and that we wouldn’t have them without patents.

But then, I’m the guy who thought it was strange when I saw a sign at a dry cleaner that said, “We now have organic solvents” – isn’t that what dry cleaners have always used – trichloroethane or something like that?

By: Jeff Perkins

Jeff Perkins — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:48:17 +0000

It is not surprising that a socialist doesn’t like patents. Patents are personal property, usually held by private parties (i.e. not the government). Socialists like taking people’s wealth “for the common good.” Even current US law permits expropriation of private patent rights under certain circumstances (secrecy order). As our country devolves into a gangster-run Banana Republic, expect further schemes to expropriate private intellectual property — or to prohibit its creation on the first place. As predicted by Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged, when Hank Rearden had to surrender his patent for Rearden Metal.

That famous experiment in socialism called the Soviet Union didn’t like patents, either. They issued “Inventor’s Certificates”, no more than glorified attaboys, to their slave-inventors. How did that work out for them, hmmmm? I doubt if Weisbrot knows about that aspect of the USSR, or if he ever knew, engages in Orwellian blankout to prevent recalling it.

A country that does not protect its intellectual property is destined to a future of tin-shacked barrios. But to a socialist, all property is static, no weatlh is ever created — only held by the selfish or “shared” by the needy.

God help us.