The moral grey area of IP for biotech.

in biotech •  2 years ago 

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Its important to compensate the producers of Intellectual Property, but it's also important to realize most of the value of creating close to zero marginal cost product (ie - almost everyone who wants it, gets it, at a price not too much above production price).

These two factors of compensating creators and maximizing distribution are in tension, but it's pretty hard to argue that US-EU regulations are on the efficient frontier.

Since most current regimes are overregulated to create monopolies, I think it's fine to use all of that IP in a jurisdiction that doesn't have treaty obligations to protect foreign IP (like, it isn't part of the WIPO).

Perhaps pay a royalty (voluntary royalties would be pretty damn cool deemonstration of a society's ethics).

It seems worth trying an "IP-free zone", in order to see what happens. Can we get significantly closer to the efficient frontier of creator compensation + distribution? Is there greater innovation with the ability to use all the world's IP?

If so, the world being able to share in the results of that innovation is, in a sense, partial compensation for the use of the IP. A zone could even require (or have a strong custom for) open-sourcing of that derivative IP. And IP that is revealed in use (a gene therapy that can later be sequenced from your DNA) would of course be fair game for anyone else in the zone, and have the issue of whether creators are undercompensated.

It just sounds so incredibly fun to me to mess around with mechanisms for this, and see what happens.

It's easy and low tech to copy gene therapies with DNA synthesis. Far lower capital cost than reproducing pharmaceuticals.

The lower the cost of copying, the more "piracy" will happen. I hope it goes like Netflix where the service is actually good & affordable enough that it's better than piracy. I'm pretty happy with the state of that sector.

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