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A comment on Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine. Parent comment

Re:Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine by pizza234 on Monday November 23, 2020 @05:13AM (#25185232)
Pharmaceutical corporations are not exactly well known to seek "fair" profits.

Practically speaking, I suppose a hypothetical scenario could be that the:

- the companies are granted patents

- the vaccine lasts for a limited amount of time

- before each patent expiry they companies make minor modifications (say, storage temperature requirement decreased by half a degree)

- the company make "unfair" profits by extending the oligopoly for a very long amount of time

I'm not stating that this will happen, but on the other hand, I find this plausible.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine by drran on Monday November 23, 2020 @05:19AM (#25185270)
It looks like a huge opportunity! Start your own pharmaceutical company and disrupt these bastards! You found the problem, now bring the solution.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine by guipsp on Monday November 23, 2020 @05:57AM (#25185493)
Unfortunately, this area has a very high start up cost, which limits disruption. This is the big problem when people say "just disrupt".

In addition, the aforementioned patents prevent disruption. Even long after the original patent expires.

[ Parent | on HN ]