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TechDirt Highlights Patents' Conflict With Human Life, Explains Evergreening

Mike Masnick
TechDirt's Mike Masnick



Summary: Concepts such as patent monopolies and evergreening (loophole for extending the lifetime of a patent monopoly) explained by Masnick and Moody

In articles that are written mostly by Dr. Glyn Moody and are outside our standard scope of coverage (most of the time but not always) it is shown that medicine suffers from patents. Contrary to the propaganda about patents being essential for scientists to come up with cures, reality suggests that patents achieve the exact opposite or limit the reach of medicine once it's available and is easy to produce in large quantities. Here are some recent articles of interest. They deserve increased attention, more attention than daily links would get.





We have already alluded to the Myriad decision [1, 2] because it is said to have an indirect impact on patenting of software, or at least on this whole debate which deals with software patents.

Evergreening is not unique to medicine. MPEG-LA does it and so do various other patent cartels, as we showed in previous years (we no longer have the capacity to cover as much as we did before). Maybe it's time to legislate against this practice, for it is simply a loophole that subverts basic principles of patents. Think of how Hollywood always lobbies to indefinitely extend the duration/term of copyright monopoly. Similar trick.

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