Good point, Heinz!? Man, and I thought that you are better informed than most. What about the x86 architecture, for starters? Goodness, MSFT, the most well known of the s/w comapnies has everything proprietory. You think that the SunOS-SOLARIS architecture is for all to freely copy w/o paying license fees?
In fact, drug patents expire after 20 years usually, of which Phases 1 trough 3 of drug development take up to 10 years (though this is dropping fast because of technology). In particular, for s/w companies, everything is propietory. Well, 10 years outdated s/w is worth nothing anyway, so even the problem of copyright expiration doesn't apply. On top, most s/w companies have increasing return based business models w/ little capital outlay. Drug comapnies have these capital intensive production lines to keep busy even when no new ideas are in the pipeline.
And you think that Ike's position, that drug companies deserve higher premia, is a good one? No wonder that the market disagrees wth you. Sorry if I sound harsh, but this really takes the cake of all the ludicrous things posted in this thread, half of them by Luc. |
