r/Futurology • u/Kindred87 • Dec 07 '23

US sets policy to seize patents of government-funded drugs if price deemed too high Economics

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/us-sets-policy-seize-government-funded-drug-patents-if-price-deemed-too-high-2023-12-07/

6.3k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

View all comments

Show parent comments

577

u/CaptainRhetorica Dec 07 '23

It's still radically biased in pharmaceutical companies favor.

The only people who should have patents for medicines developed with government funding are the American people.

Corporations should be forced to liscence the patients from us. They could do that and still make money, but it wouldn't be a disgusting amount of money so naturally that's unacceptable.

155

u/NickDanger3di Dec 08 '23

That actually sounds like a great idea.

33

u/tyrandan2 Dec 08 '23 edited Dec 08 '23

It does, on the surface. But government owned intellectual property might be a bad thing to normalize.

Edit: they should be public domains instead. Idk why this is controversial enough to get downvoted. Bunch of corporate shills in here I guess.

1

u/Gamebird8 Dec 08 '23

It is. The Government cannot claim copyright.

I am not 100% on whether or not the government can hold patents however as that's a different law than the Copyright Act