Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by hittaruki 3953 days ago
As an example one of the Pharma companies mentioned Novartis is very much profitable. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-10-28/novartis-t...
1 comments

I am still finding it hard to understand this argument. Why do you think pharma companies like Novartis will continue to be profitable if all of their patents and future patents are ignored? Why would any pharma company invest billions into new research when their IP could just be stolen by an Indian generic and sold for pennies on the dollar?
Because they're still making billions? But hey, we're not making as many billions as we could. Let's just shut it all down for good. Your reasoning is stupid.
The drugs that make them billions are things like Xanax, Prozac and Viagra.

We need to incentivize research into important medicine (ie antibiotics, or something to actually cure AIDS and malaria for good), which is hard because as soon as they develop something actually useful, people refuse to honor their patents.