Couldn't have said it better. "Why would i develop something that could save millions of lives if it will save millions of lives and might not make me money". Absurd
That sounds reasonable to reasonable people, yes. But remember that US presidents have considered us in a state of emergency over a drug pandemic for decades. In the US, power like this will always find a way to be used for racist and nepotistic reasons. We're going from 0 to 100 here real quick, and we need to think through the long-term repercussions a little bit.
if you’re thinking about profit motive at a time like this you are part of the problem. Full stop
People will remember. A decade or two ago, during a flu outbreak that had pandemic potential (I think it was 2006), the government of Indonesia refused to share early samples. The reason? In the past, vaccine manufacturers had refused to sell flu vaccine during pandemics at a discount to the developing country.
From a game-theoretic viewpoint it makes sense - Indonesia isn't worse off if it refuses to cooperate, Indonesian citizens will die anyway. Israel calls this stance "Samson Option".
Say you're a toilet paper maker. In normal times => "your product is trivial to produce, why are you charging so much" => razor-thin margins => almost no profit. In crisis => "why are you thinking about profit" => razor-thin margins => almost no profit.
Meanwhile, you have politicians and multinationals evading tax, landlords and universities exploiting naive & vulnerable populations, Uber & Facebook skirting legislation and making bank, CEOs getting away with billions after burning $50B, elites raping kids and getting away with it, ... real "social responsibility".
Yet nothing that isn't paid for, can get done at any scale. The profit motive here was absurd. But any company that makes something useful for this pandemic, must find a business model that works. Else it won't happen.
Yet nothing that isn't paid for, can get done at any scale.
That doesn't mean it has to be privately funded with an arbitrarily large profit margin, though. In much of the world, we publicly fund some research, we fund quite a lot of medical research through charitable organisations as well, and we operate largely centralised public or at least semi-public healthcare services that buy the end results of the successful research at reasonable rates because of their huge negotiating power.
I think a lot of people from the US who have never been abroad for an extended period might not even realise how far behind normal standards the US really is in terms of how it manages its medical research and healthcare provision. People in much of the world really would assume you were joking if you said someone could go bankrupt just because they were unlucky and got sick, or that vital treatments that could save many lives might be withheld just because of profits.
Ironically, this is one of the main issues that torpedoed a US-EU trade deal not that long ago after many years of negotiations, probably at considerable economic cost to both parties. The general issue of excessive patent rights, and some national issues in member states such as the NHS being the "third rail" of UK politics, turned out to be deal-breakers.
Theranos never had a working product and actively did harm, so I don’t know how having patents would have ever helped them scale that business model.
Beyond that, these are extraordinary circumstances. There will be plenty of bailouts and stimulus for you to scale your business model when the dust settles; let’s focus on scaling our response and systems to meet this crisis first shall we?
Not having to have a working _product_ is actually sensible IMO: maybe patent terms should be limited in such situations (half perhaps).
If I invent a new space rocket, how am I going to keep it quiet, as a small time inventor, long enough to get funding, and build the rocket (we're looking at 1000s of NDAs and warding off an entire rocket production facility from public view) ... do I then have to submit it for testing to make sure it conforms to the invention the patent was applied for? Maybe that requires dismantling it, or witnessing it in operation in an extra-terrestrial planets atmosphere (Mars landing capability, say) ... it's just not workable to require an embodiment to be produced.
Aside: most countries have utility or design patents that protect actual products, but these are in addition to technology patents because working around a single embodiment or design is relatively easy to do, working around a mode of operation is not.
Patent applications are already supposed to be enabling disclosures, that is guides to the skilled person in that field which would enable them to work the invention. This requirement has maybe slipped a bit; but in the US8283155 patent in question they seem to give reasonable information about the operation and scope of their idea [it's not my field].