Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter (now X) and Square (now Block), sparked a weekend’s worth of debate around intellectual property, patents, and

Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter (now X) and Square (now Block), sparked a weekend’s worth of debate around intellectual property, patents, and copyright, with a characteristically terse post declaring, “delete all IP law.”

X’s current owner Elon Musk quickly replied, “I agree.”

  • conditional_soup@lemm.eeEnglish
    77·
    3 days ago

    This is why it’s a mixed bag for me. IP law is kinda important in a capitalist system, which, for better or worse, that’s what we have. If someone comes up with a wonder drug that outright cures addiction or something, you’d want that person to be able to recoup their costs before a bigger organization with more capital swoops in and undercuts them on production costs until they’re the sole supplier of the drug. The hepatitis C cure drug selling for $70,000 is a great example of this quandary; there’s millions of dollars worth of research and clinical trials that went into developing the drug, you’d want the company to be able to recuperate the costs of developing it or else there’s less incentive to do something similar for other diseases down the line. Also, though, $70,000 or go fucking die is an outrageous statement.

    Of course, what we have for IP law in practice is a bastardized monster, where corporations exploit the fuck out of it to have monopoly control over important products like insulins and life-saving medications that cost cents to produce and allow them to sell for hundreds a dose. That’s not the intent of IP law, IMO, and that doesn’t really serve anyone.

    • Libra00@lemmy.worldEnglish
      60·
      3 days ago

      I see the point you’re aiming at, but it’s not little companies discovering new drugs it’s giant corporations (often on the back of government research money) who then ‘swoop in’ to protect their own profits while people in underdeveloped nations die of tuberculosis or whatever because they would rather make money than save lives.

    • zeezee@slrpnk.netEnglish
      43·
      3 days ago

      idk i think our incentive should be to cure diseases with public funding and make people healthy instead of for profit but what do i know

      • conditional_soup@lemm.eeEnglish
        11·
        3 days ago

        I agree, though I will note that I have often found that there is a non-trivial gap between what is and what ought to be.

    • Avatar_of_Self@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      2 days ago

      In the US the tax payer subsidizes almost all drug research. Between 2010 and 2019 the NIH spent $184 Billion on all but 2 drugs approved by the FDA.

      It worked out to about $1.5 Billion for each R&D product with a novel target and about $600 mill for each R&D product with multiple targets.

      https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10148199/

      Or

      https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullarticle/2804378

      The cost to develop each drug is between about $1 and $2.5 Billion

      I’m not sure how much is subsidized outside of NIH but I’d imagine other countries are doing the same.

      Why should companies own the whole IP or perhaps why should they have any ownership if most of the funding is from the public?

      • conditional_soup@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        This is a great point. I know that some pharmas actually do internally funded research, it’s a thing, it happens, but it’s completely dwarfed by shareholder giveaways and government subsidies ofc.

    • Pyr@lemmy.caEnglish
      5·
      3 days ago

      The problem I mostly have is even when those costs are recouped most companies fight tooth and nail to keep the prices high and unaffordable in order to line the pockets of investors.