> how is it justified to keep access to life saving drugs beyond the reach of most people
Trivially. By asserting that without intellectual property protection those drugs wouldn't have been invented. I'm not arguing if that's true or not. But it's certainly how people justify it.
I'm going to copy and paste one of my favorite comments on copyright. From Judge Richard Posner. It's bit a of a wall of text; sorry. It's worth reading in it's entirety.
"A distinguishing characteristic of intellectual property is its "public good" aspect. While the cost of creating a work subject to copyright protection—for example, a book, movie, song, ballet, lithograph, map, business directory, or computer software program—is often high, the cost of reproducing the work, whether by the creator or by those to whom he has made it available, is often low. And once copies are available to others, it is often inexpensive for these users to make additional copies. If the copies made by the creator of the work are priced at or close to marginal cost, others may be discouraged from making copies, but the creator’s total revenues may not be sufficient to cover the cost of creating the work. Copyright protection—the right of the copyright’s owner to prevent others from making copies—trades off the costs of limiting access to a work against the benefits of providing incentives to create the work in the first place.
STRIKING THE CORRECT BALANCE BETWEEN ACCESS AND INCENTIVES IS THE CENTRAL PROBLEM IN COPYRIGHT LAW. [empaphsis added]
For copyright law to promote economic efficiency, its principal legal doctrines must, at least approximately, maximize the benefits from creating additional works minus both the losses from limiting access and the costs of administering copyright protection."
One may argue that balance is way off right now. I would prefer to see a system in which there are lump sums by the government for a treatment development with certain performance characteristics.
And the government owns the rights afterwards. We should make pharma companies do work for hire.
>Trivially. By asserting that without intellectual property protection those drugs wouldn't have been invented
That isn't trivial. It's stupid. It's a completely non-disprovable argument.
Plenty of innovations are created where creators voluntarily yields their rights and plenty of others are probably not created because the creator of it (under employment) isn't hugely keen on creating yet more property for his or her employer to exploit.
hahahaha this place is going downhill. In fairness, maybe it's always been like this during the too-early/way-too-late timeframes.
Sorry, but the world ain't full of copyleft warriors. People put their name on patents, in no small part because they immediately subsequently put that patent on their resumes. Nobody is denying themselves earning power - cash money - in order to protect the public interest from their big bad provider of paychecks. Especially since the public interest, here, means "the companies competing with my provider of paychecks".
Trivially. By asserting that without intellectual property protection those drugs wouldn't have been invented. I'm not arguing if that's true or not. But it's certainly how people justify it.
I'm going to copy and paste one of my favorite comments on copyright. From Judge Richard Posner. It's bit a of a wall of text; sorry. It's worth reading in it's entirety.
"A distinguishing characteristic of intellectual property is its "public good" aspect. While the cost of creating a work subject to copyright protection—for example, a book, movie, song, ballet, lithograph, map, business directory, or computer software program—is often high, the cost of reproducing the work, whether by the creator or by those to whom he has made it available, is often low. And once copies are available to others, it is often inexpensive for these users to make additional copies. If the copies made by the creator of the work are priced at or close to marginal cost, others may be discouraged from making copies, but the creator’s total revenues may not be sufficient to cover the cost of creating the work. Copyright protection—the right of the copyright’s owner to prevent others from making copies—trades off the costs of limiting access to a work against the benefits of providing incentives to create the work in the first place.
STRIKING THE CORRECT BALANCE BETWEEN ACCESS AND INCENTIVES IS THE CENTRAL PROBLEM IN COPYRIGHT LAW. [empaphsis added]
For copyright law to promote economic efficiency, its principal legal doctrines must, at least approximately, maximize the benefits from creating additional works minus both the losses from limiting access and the costs of administering copyright protection."
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/IPCoop/89land1.html