[rgejman]

The "bait" is the claim that a patent-less drug will be cheaper when it finally comes into use in the clinic than a patented drug (from your indysci campaign: "Releasing without a patent means the drugs will be cheaper and it will be easier to build on the work to make improved drugs or drug combinations. Releasing without a patent means expanded access to drugs in countries that can't afford extensive licensing and export agreements.")

But you and I both know that is not how drug development works. When you bring in a pharmaceutical company to fund the clinical trials (which are hugely risky) they will demand an upside. The upside will come if they (a) make a derivative molecule that they can patent (b) patent a use of the drug for an indication (c) package the molecule in a way that is patentable -- e.g. with an adjuvant.

The crowdsourcing page on Indysci reads as if the drug will eventually be cheap and readily accessible just because you have not applied for patent protection.

Another point: the indysci page misleads people about what drug patents means by comparing it to open-source software. As an academic researcher, you can work on ANY molecule, no matter its patent status, in an academic research setting. That means you can develop new uses for the molecule, make derivatives, etc. What you really mean is that patented drugs cannot be SOLD by anyone other than the manufacturer.

[dnautics]

Typically industrial compound leads are developed in closed, siloed situations, because if you disclose you jeopardize your patent status. Of course, "open sourcing" doesn't guaranteed development in non-siloed environments either (you could just fail to 'git push' on a mistake branch), but it does somewhat eliminate the incentives to do so. Perhaps the wording ("it will be easier to build on the work to make improved drugs or drug combinations") on my attempt to analogize that is bad for being unspecific. Do you have a suggestion on how I might change that on the page to better reflect this concept?