aeroone

Is the Winner Pfizer, Merck or Roche?

No, I meant copyright on new chemical entity drugs. Disease-modifying or life-saving new drugs deserve copyright status in addition to patent life. Big Pharma would be incentivized to invest in R&D discovery, as well as introduce future new drugs at lower cost, if they knew that there would be a stream of royalty income beyond patent life for such products.

Is the Winner Pfizer, Merck or Roche?

The long term answer to Big Pharma's problems is copyright status for all new chemical entity marketed drugs, or at least 10-15 years of market exclusivity for these entities. Why should these companies invest in R&D discovery if after a dozen years of development, they only have 8 years of effective market life to recoup their $500M development cost per molecule and generate a return to their shareholders? And, in these days of litigation, the 8 years now often is less because of generic companies' use of Paragraph IV challenges to patents. No, these companies, which discover life-saving drugs, should have the right to profits and a stream of royalities ad infinitum, similar to copyright laws on songs, books, plays, etc. You would find under this system more new drugs with lower initial cost since companies would know that their discoveries would generate profits for many years forward.