
Why Gene Patents Are Unlawful - chaostheory
http://blog.aclu.org/2009/05/22/why-gene-patents-are-unlawful/
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nazgulnarsil
patents are idiotic. capitalism worked before patents were invented.

~~~
noblethrasher
The patent system as implemented may be idiotic. In principle, I don't see a
problem with granting someone a temporary monopoly for monetizing discoveries
that came about as the result of long and difficult work. Society is almost
certainly better off if the patent system causes discoveries to be made sooner
than when the patent was granted plus the length of the patent term. I'm torn
on the gene patent though.One the one hand, a gene is a non-obvious
mathematical formalism that offers an explanatory account of heredity. So we
don't really have genes in our bodies and any arguments relying on such a
claim are dubious. Furthermore, patents do have research exemptions. Now, my
intuitions tell me such a patent is wrong but I'd really like to see a solid
supportive argument.

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kiba
How would you presume to measure the impact of patents? How do you know which
patents should be granted or not granted? The benefit is for whom?

What about the inventors that got left behind because the other inventors got
to monopolized his invention first? He didn't have a chance to try to put it
on the market.

The problem is that the patent system cannot possibly account for all the
impacts of the patents that affected the economy. The economy is a chaostic
complex entity composed of many million of human beings making trillion of
decision on the daily basis on what to buy and sell. The free market is
astoudingly complex.

You have the audacity to think that you can improve the economy by imposing a
monopoly on that one lucky inventor. You have no idea the unseen consequences
that would result from your actions. Inventions never created, resource never
allocated, and customers unsatisfied. The whole of history that we never knew
changed forever by the course of a single patent.

Economic history is awashed with pirates producing books and making the
authors rich, fortune ruined by patent ligitation, and untold stories of
opportunistic inventors exploiting connections to widen their monopolies.

Interventionism in the free market is never without its cost. You would bet
very well that the law of unintended consequences applied to the patent system
as much as stupid laws mandating the price of gasolines.

