[Ip-health] Money instead of monopolies: European Patent Forum discussion

[James Packard Love]

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http://www.epo.org/focus/patent-system/scenarios-for-the-future/
forum.html

Discussions at the European Patent Forum

Money instead of monopolies

Patents confer to the holder the right to prevent others from
selling, offering or using the patented invention. While this was
seen as the appropriate means of protection for innovation in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it was felt by many to be
unsuitable for the collaborative innovation processes of the 21st
century.

Patents are considered by some to block the modern innovation and
technological diffusion process. They see the only solution to this
problem in a weakening of patent rights in order to balance the
system. A "license of right" regime in which exclusive patent rights
are transformed into the right to collect license fees - money
instead of monopoly - was specifically addressed.

Some regarded the introduction of a prize system parallel to or
instead of the patent system as necessary in the pharmaceutical
sector. Such a system, they argued, would create incentives in the
medical field without leading to exaggerated and unaffordable prices
for medication. This view was contradicted by the pharmaceutical
industry. They feel that the strongest possible patent rights are
necessary to compensate the huge investment needed for pharmaceutical
inventions.

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James Packard Love
Knowledge Ecology International
http://www.keionline.org
james.love@keionline.org
Washington, DC +1.202.332.2670

"If everyone thinks the same: No one thinks." Bill Walton"