Readit NewsIf we had been offered something that lasted half as long but issued twice as fast, we would have taken that in a heartbeat.
And if you can't afford it? Does society pay? Do we let them die? I'm interested in your answer.
>I have family members who are only functional because of prescription drugs.
Me too.
>I don't know what the HBR's source is because they don't tell me.
And I don't know where your 5 year number comes from because you didn't provide a source.
When I see someone on HN talk about how "oh, it will probably be okay if we leave the market alone, I read this really cool article online that said so," I see them no different than someone who stood by a river and watched their grandfather struggle against the current, because "oh, it will probably be okay." You don't know what you are talking about. Stop it.
The same thing that happens with the people whose lives could be saved right now if we stopped funding roads, or basic research, or investing in the city's water system, or educating first-graders, or researching drugs, or enforcing the property rights of rich people, or a bunch of other things that aren't going to pay off for years and are not associated with one's political party. It's not that the parties being funded are all completely honest and trustworthy, but that the money still needs to be spent. Drug research is one of the small number of things society does that actually add to the public good forever. Every year amazing drugs that do amazing things go off-patent. It's an amazing system and our children should be awed by how much stuff they will have. "Hepatitis C" will be like "polio" for them.
There is no reason to think the years 2010-2025 are some magic perfect ground where the drugs from pre-2010 are completely unsuitable and all the drugs that will be invented in year 2025 and beyond are unimportant or will still be found if a bunch of people who understand neither biochemistry nor economics rebuilt the economic system around it.
Every generation has the option to quit investing in the future. There are always people who want to stop all the painful sacrifices that are required right now, and just live off of yesterday's accumulated sacrifices and then go to sleep.
There will always be some procedure that keeps people alive but that costs Too Much Money. It's how most countries have kept their health care costs under control without noticeably impacting QALYs. There should be no doubt that there are people who died sooner because of these decisions, but the system works and doesn't bankrupt them. If "but we can't let someone die for a reason as stupid as money" is your terminal argument, be thankful you weren't in charge, or else society would have gone bankrupt a long time ago. These are hard decisions but adults need to make them, and generally adults do make them and things work out.
> When I see someone on HN talk about how "oh, it will probably be okay if we leave the market alone
I think there's a lot that can be improved about the market. I have a lot to say about that, but you are trying so hard to be cute and using children's arguments that goodwill can no longer be assumed. Good night and good luck.
All the money going towards marketing would instead go towards lobbying, towards getting the government agency in charge of deciding "what really counts" for deciding that this drug should be one of them. When the US government was looking at how to create incentives for invention, they did look at rewards systems, and this was the common problem. Using the market system, for all its faults and ways it could be improved, at least sends proper price signals to producers and consumers.
Isn't that the point? In medicine, you often can't just wait it out. Healthcare is not a normal market.
>By the time a major drug is ready for market, out of a 20 year patent there are usually only 5 years left.
>And for most new drugs, patents expire approximately 12 years after market introduction.
https://hbr.org/2014/11/the-real-cost-of-high-priced-drugs
>When they are operating under that kind of deadline, they don't have time for word-of-mouth marketing.
Word-of-mouth marketing isn't really "slow" if the drug is very effective.
Then you pay.
I have family members who are only functional because of prescription drugs. When I see someone on HN talk about how "oh, it will probably be okay if we mess with this market, I read this really cool article online that said so," I see them no different than someone who decided on their own to start tinkering with grandpa's iron lung, because "oh, it will probably be okay." You don't know what you are messing with. Stop it.
>And for most new drugs, patents expire approximately 12 years after market introduction.
I don't know what the HBR's source is because they don't tell me. I am telling you to find any drug you see newly on the market, particularly one you see on tv since you worry about marketing budgets, and look up when its patent expires.
This is nuts. By the time a major drug is ready for market, out of a 20 year patent there are usually only 5 years left. How much shorter do you think it should be? When they are operating under that kind of deadline, they don't have time for word-of-mouth marketing.
For software, sure, I'm really willing to hear arguments that 20 years is too long. But drug patents lifetimes are already very small. If something is too expensive, wait a few years.
My claim is that reasonable printers that are free of bullshit exist for most purposes (prior to Epson switching to reservoir printers, the home color printer market was pretty thin) and yet companies that do use bullshit tactics continue to exist. So the printers exist (patents have not particularly held them back) and for some reason enough people ignore these reasonable printers for companies using abusive tactics to survive.
1. find the model where the company subsidizes the printer to sell the ink
2. Then try to work around the lockouts the company has on the ink market.
Both sides are trying to screw each other over. I see no reason to care. If the people trying to use third-party ink really succeed, all that will happen is that the market strategy will disappear, and so the third-party ink market will vanish. (I really wonder how you run a business where if you really win you go out of business. You need to hope the other side keeps on fighting just enough that you can attract all the people who enjoy fighting over pennies.)
Also, presumably you failed to register your software with the copyright office before the infringement began. In such a case you're less likely to get a fat damages award. Which is actually a good reason to pursue a patent claim, but if we're being cynical it's also a good reason for a firm to _prefer_ a patent claim.
The fact of the matter is that if the case was a slam dunk as you say, you should have been able to get an injunction fairly quickly, depending on when this occurred. Step one to seeking an injunction would have been to register your software (or a component of the software, if you didn't want to divulge the whole thing) with the Copyright Office. Currently their e-filing website says it'd take 6-10 months. It used to be much shorter than that. A few years ago, IIRC, I received a certificate in less than 90 days. In any event, that's much shorter than 2 years.
It's also a good lesson: always register at least some component of your software with the Copyright Office; a component that an infringer would necessarily have to copy. To get through the courthouse doors you need a certificate from the Copyright Office, but it doesn't have to cover the entire, larger work. It's more of a procedural hurdle of the copyright statute that courts construe very liberally, so you needn't be afraid of having to publish all your source code just to get a certificate.
The nice thing about copyright is that it's simple enough that you don't really need to involve a lawyer. Of course, you don't do this to the exclusion of any patent filings, but it's a smart move that is almost zero cost. Paste your software into a TeX document, generate a PDF, and upload it to the Copyright Office website. Easy peasey.
NOTE: IANAL
What the fuck. Oh, you got that when you googled them, and you think the fucking top-tier national IP law firm had no other ideas at all because the patent hadn't issued yet.
> NOTE: IANAL
No shit.
HN is such a fucking clown show.