What I think is happening is that the number of affected people is so low and the cost of producing this small number is very large and the company does not want a profit but a BIG profit.
Especially for lifesaving medical patents. If the drug isn’t being produced, or the price is too high (I don’t know how this would be defined), governments should be empowered to seize the IP and solicit bids to produce the invention. We move heaven and earth to save lives in natural disasters, why do we move so slowly with certain medical conditions?
Unfortunately, this happens all the time, but not for the public good. Research universities use patent portfolios to increase their revenue by licensing inventions to companies that can manufacture the product.
For example in 2014 NYU earned $214M in IP licensing and nationally led the period from 2004-2010.
> Not nobody, just purely for profit rent seekers.
This is not an example of "rent-seeking behavior", which is a technical term with a specific meaning. It's not merely a synonym for "profit-maximizing behavior which I don't like".
> If a company does not make use of a patent they should at least loose their right to it.
Someone can always try and license the rights from them, if they think they can do a better job making money off of them. Problem is, I bet nobody else was interested in licensing it from them at any reasonable price, because they would have the same problem: the market just isn't there, at any price that would make it worth it to produce.
To be fair there is also a risk calculus in everything - even if completely shielded from bad drug liability the profits need to be enough to make taking the gamble repeatably sustainable. To take a deliberately extreme example companies won't try to buy out entire lotteries until the jackpot is big enough to pay off if nobody else wins (thus cutting the income percentage by N - where N is the number of winners).
Greed is a factor and a problem of course but without running the numbers it is hard to say what is the smallest acceptable profit for the outcome.
I wonder if ironically we'll eventually start to see health insurance companies cut out the middleman and do cure research directly to cut their sustained costs. A bit idyllic to hope for yet it also indicates several other problems.