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To: TimF who wrote (183408)	2/3/2006 3:02:05 PM
From: BelowTheCrowd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

In any case I accepted the idea that patents are meddleing in the market. I just pointed out that other countries do this meddleing as well. Don't disagree. Keep in mind that those other countries have for allowed us to take the lead, primarily to our own advantage. Read chapter 8 of that manuscript with regard to pharmaceuticals in Italy before and after their government allowed patenting. More recently, India has been forced under severe pressure to go along with drug patenting laws similar to our own. The danger to our pharma industry is that some day some chunk of the world will tell them where to shove their patent protections. Having been free of the need to rapidly compete and innovate for so long, they'll be truly screwed. If you think patents should be eliminated I probably wouldn't agree but you might convince me. Either way I don't see how a problem with patents should result in a support for price controls. On the former, I wouldn't try. My argument, and the argument of the authors is that the protections are excessive and well beyond the well-defined Constitutional purpose of "promoting the progress of science and useful arts." At a certain point protection becomes counterproductive to innovation, and I believe we are well past that point. The latter is a symptom of how stupid government is, and I don't think it's the solution either. First, they give pharma companies protection in excess of that which is necessary to promote innovation, THEN they try to control the monopolies their policies have created by imposing price controls. The right solution, of course, is to strike a better balance up front -- providing sufficient incentive to innovate and no more. Going off topic, pharma isn't the worst abuser of our IP system. Hollywood takes the cake on that. However, nobody dies because of a lack of competition in the movie business... -btc