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A comment on The US Supreme Court is hearing a case about patent law’s “exhaustion doctrine”. Parent comment

Re:The US Supreme Court is hearing a case about patent law’s... by erikw on Wednesday March 22, 2017 @09:46AM (#13930813)
I see this sentiment a lot- "yes patents are bad for individuals and from a macroeconomic perspective, but we need them so that Big Pharma can ultimately improve our quality of life."

I wonder though, has anyone studied to see if that holds up? I suspect that our quality of life improvements come from infrastructure like access to safe drinking water, and general accessibility to medicines not protected by intellectual property monopolies.

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Re:The US Supreme Court is hearing a case about patent law’s... by aeorgnoieang on Wednesday March 22, 2017 @11:29AM (#13931688)
Yes, this has been studied. Pharmaceuticals are actually one of the few areas where patents and other IP protections do actually encourage innovation. For most areas tho the protections seem to be of (significantly) net negative utility.
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Re:The US Supreme Court is hearing a case about patent law’s... by ethbro on Wednesday March 22, 2017 @10:24AM (#13931116)
> general accessibility to medicines not protected by intellectual property monopolies

Could you provide some examples of these?

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