I've wondered, how does that prevent a generic version of the original from appearing? Clever marketing and control of their product isn't good but it's not evil.
Most generics are in fact manufactured by the original patent holder and sold to third parties (or in some cases marketed by a subsidiary with a different name). Setting up a manufacturing process for a drug is often non-trivial, so if the original manufacturer stops producing a drug, it may not be worth anyone else's while to (a) create a factory, and (b) get their version of the drug through safety testing, etc.
(I'm no expert, but I did work with pharmaceutical companies for about a decade, and in many cases they were manufacturing selling brand name and generic drugs side-by-side, or selling brand name in some markets and generics in others -- all from the same factory.)
> Setting up a manufacturing process for a drug is often non-trivial, so if the original manufacturer stops producing a drug, it may not be worth anyone else's while to (a) create a factory, and (b) get their version of the drug through safety testing, etc.
So what you're saying is that drug patents add only a thin/negligible benefit above and beyond natural barriers to entry? I guess that's a good trade then--i.e., here's a "monopoly" (in your uncontested market) in exchange for the recipe of the secret sauce. From society's point of view, all that's left is to tune the expiration of the patent to coincide as closely as possible with the competition completing their tests and first factory without dissuading applicants.
Alternately, if competition is never going to reproduce the secret sauce as described in the patent, may as well do away with them since they could be scare would-be competitors from entering the market.
It's not black and white. The US is particularly screwed because of loopholes in regulations that drug companies started exploiting in the late 90s to advertise direct to patients (illegal almost everywhere else). So you've got drug A which is going out of patent and A' which is A with something hanging off it that's harmless but counts as novel. So you switch gears and put all your marketing behind A' (including cherry picked studies). You can produce A cheaper than anyone else, but you don't have to. Anyone trying to enter the market with A risks you undercutting them, and meanwhile you're marketing A' against A.
