inconvenient patent law and eminent domain

dc councilmember catania wants to use eminent domain to take drug patents and license them to generic manufacturers. dc residents are being priced out of necessary medications by predatory business practices, he claims. this sounds like a first cousin of communism to me.

i’m skeptical that we really need patents to promote entrepreneurship in the first place, as many industries seem to survive just fine without them (coke and pepsi syrups being good examples). this drug proposition is far worse than simply allowing the private sector to create look-alikes by analyzing their competitor’s formula. it’s simply stealing for the sake of the public good. this is much worse because the competing companies won’t have to guess about trade secrets – they’ll get the exact formula.

it will wipe out any incentive whatsoever to create new drugs. why would companies waste money to create a new drug if, when it’s found to be life-saving, they knew they would likely be forced to hand the discovery to the government? with no assurance that their work could be kept private, therefore profitable, i predict research and ingenuity in pharmaceuticals would plummet. some nonprofits and government-funded projects would plod ahead with AIDS vaccine and cancer research, but at current levels those alone cannot generate enough money to fund the extortionately expensive research going on now.

we’d do better to get rid of patent laws if poor folks are indeed unable to get necessary medications, which i sincerely doubt.

oh, and what is "necessary medication," anyway?

read doug bandow’s take.

thanks to scotty b. for the heads up on this.