Yet Another Nobel Prize Winner Says That Intellectual Property Is Harming Science

We’ve discussed in the past how Noble Prize winning economists have been worried about the impact of intellectual property laws, and how at least one Nobel Prize winning physicist is warning that strict intellectual property laws are harming science and innovation. Now we can add a Nobel Prize winning biologist to the list (his Nobel was for medicine). Sir John Sulston has written up a column for The Guardian explaining how intellectual property is “shackling” science:

The myth is that IP rights are as important as our rights in castles, cars and corn oil. IP is supposedly intended to encourage inventors and the investment needed to bring their products to the clinic and marketplace. In reality, patents often suppress invention rather than promote it: drugs are “evergreened” when patents are on the verge of running out — companies buy up the patents of potential rivals in order to prevent them being turned into products. Moreover, the prices charged, especially for pharmaceuticals, are often grossly in excess of those required to cover costs and make reasonable profits.

Read more . . .

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Tags: common misconceptions, independent inventor, intellectual property is harming science, intellectual property laws, invention, ip rights, Nobel Prize winner, patents, sir john sulston

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 10:15 am and is filed under Consider This, IP, Innovation Needed, Need to Know, Shape of Things to Come?, Techdirt, Worth Repeating. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.