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>Do you think their business would collapse,

It would depend on the project's margins and/or sunk costs. A project that had very little invested in it or is a breakout success might we able to weather a 50% cut in exclusivity period, but a marginal product might not. Most of the already developed drugs are probably going to be fine, assuming that the financing for them was already secured.

>or would they keep trying?

For the projects at the margins? most certainly. That is not to say all private drug development would, stop. If some sort of unpatented-but-super-cheap-to-perfect-but-still-not-patented drug showed up it might still be developed, but in aggregate I'd expect drug development to drop significantly.




I am arguing that there are no marginal projects at current profit levels, and that's why they can spend billions on stock buybacks. There is a point that lessening patent protections would cause companies to cut back, but we are not at that point.


>I am arguing that there are no marginal projects at current profit levels, and that's why they can spend billions on stock buybacks

How does the act of buybacks imply that there are no marginal projects?




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