While I support IP for individuals, I don’t support it for large companies and definitely not for drug companies.
I understand the money involved in making drugs, but you should not be able to monopolize a life saving drug and charge exorbitant money for it. Most of the initial drug research is done by scientists not associated with drug company.
Well, this is an unpopular opinion because it’s an incredibly stupid take that shows you have no real understanding of pharmaceutical research or business in general.
When a company develops a drug, they don’t just go, “Hey, this chemical works, let’s patent it.” One drug successfully making it to market means that there are potentially thousands of similar chemicals that were developed, tested, and failed.
The development, research, testing, and even marketing (doctors have to know it exists to prescribe it) of a single drug is astronomically expensive. If companies aren’t allowed to recoup their costs and make money on a product they created, then they’re never going to develop life saving drugs in the first place.
Now, I’m definitely all for pharma research being completely publicly funded, but most governments don’t care that much about citizens, so we’re stuck with private companies footing the bill for the majority of drug development. I’m also all for setting a price cap on patented drugs and generics.
A patent at its core is just protecting the investment the inventor made for a period of time so they can benefit from it. It’s a huge component in all innovation.