[danek]

i don't know if this is true, but i heard somewhere that drug companies don't really innovate anything.

it's the NIH and universities (via government funding) that actually discover the drugs, then they sell the exclusive rights to manufacture it to big pharma (who then spends a lot to get it approved and market it and such...)

(this is the book, i haven't read it) http://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Drug-Companies-Deceive/dp/...

so in this case (if true) patents fail again.

[mseebach]

I don't know if that's correct, but if it is, it's patents that make it possible for the universities and NIH to sell the right exclusively.

Since manufacturing, testing and marketing a drug is hysterically expensive, the patent seems to serve a purpose there -- even if pharma companies are more akin to specialized investment bankers than scientists.

[paraschopra]

Actually it will be unwise to generalize for all pharma companies but yes it is a standard practice to license rights from labs/univ