[beefield]

> Removing that monopoly and not replacing it with something else will mean that no new therapies get developed.

Given that medical research is probably as close as you can get to a textbook case where patents are useful, and how obviously true many smart people think this statement is, there just _must_ be lots of robust peer reviewed academic research empirically supporting that statement.

Could someone point me to one such peer-reviewed paper?

Note that there are also opposing views. Switzerland did not have pharmaceutical patents until 1978. A quote from a famous anti-IP book[1]:

"In particular, at least between 1850 and 1980, most drugs and medical products should have been invented and produced in the United States and the United Kingdom, and very little if anything in continental Europe. Further, countries such as Italy, Switzerland and, to a lesser extent, Germany, should have been the laggards of the pharmaceutical industry until recently. Instead the opposite was true for longer than a century"

[1] http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/papers/imbookfinalall.pdf

[true_religion]

Reading the opposing viewpoint paper is confusing. Drugs will be developed wherever the talent for their development lives, then exported to a protected environment to be sold.

Even if 100% of drugs are available patent-free in Germany, it wouldn't be very helpful to people living in the US.