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by yholio 2705 days ago
> The research team hope that their software could help pharmaceutical companies in the protection of their intellectual property, and to hasten research into organic chemistry.

It seems what they are attempting to sell is a IP protection service: let us show you other molecules and synesis routes you should also patent defensively, without actually attempting them in practice. Pretty soon you will have algorithmically defined patents.

It's IP anti-science at it's worst.

2 comments

Depends on how many possible patents there are. Patents do cost money to maintain/file. It's possible that there could be life saving drugs that have so many possible patents that compared to the actual likely financial return it would be uneconomical to patent them.

Which to be fair is probably very unlikely given how healthcare costs and whatnot work in America. Can always bump the price up to compensate for expenses.

BUT - this is still a very useful tool for locating possibly cheaper/simpler methods of producing drugs that have expired protections. There is a project out there that is working on a bioreactor kit that allows the safe home production of several common drugs that are not patent protected. There are also projects that could have been life saving but were already not financially viable that could be rescued by this program.

And if someone is fast enough and has the funds to burn, they could patent some of those processes and then do what Tesla did with their patents.

I think this may open up more opportunities in the long run than it closes.

A not-so-fun fact: My country used to be on the 301 Special Report (IPR "rogue country" list) until 2015 because American pharmaceutical companies didn't consider procedural patents good enough. The last patents in that category were issued in 1995...

Apparently the income of Big Pharma investors is more important than the affordability of generics.

> Apparently the income of Big Pharma investors is more important than the affordability of generics.

You say this as if it is surprising.