You underestimate the revolutionary role of patents in allowing to innovate in the open.
Do you want to know what is the active substance of a new medicine? Do you want other researchers to know it and critique it, and build upon it? And for FDA to have easy time learning everything about the medicine? Allow the medicine to be patented.
Otherwise every other factory would start producing it, having not paid anything for years of R&D. Nobody would be able to secure a loan or investment for said R&D, and especially stuff like clinical trials.
The alternative is trade secrets, quakery, and loss of knowledge forever if a particular project fails.
Patents have their downsides. The fee structure could be different (progressive with time), the duration can be discussed, some areas should rather not be patentable (large families of substances, or software), but the idea is pretty sound and important.
Do you want to know what is the active substance of a new medicine? Do you want other researchers to know it and critique it, and build upon it? And for FDA to have easy time learning everything about the medicine? Allow the medicine to be patented.
Otherwise every other factory would start producing it, having not paid anything for years of R&D. Nobody would be able to secure a loan or investment for said R&D, and especially stuff like clinical trials.
The alternative is trade secrets, quakery, and loss of knowledge forever if a particular project fails.
Patents have their downsides. The fee structure could be different (progressive with time), the duration can be discussed, some areas should rather not be patentable (large families of substances, or software), but the idea is pretty sound and important.