On 11/12/09, Ashok Hariharan <
ashok@parliaments.info> wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 3:01 PM, Joram Mwinamo
> <
joram.mwinamo@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Imagine a pharmaceutical industry without patents.....wouldnt exist
>> although right now they are evil!
>>
>>
> You will be surprised then to learn many pharmaceutical concoctions were
> never patented (vaccines ..e.g. smallpox .. and antibiotics like
> pennicilin). The modern pharmaceutical industry exists on the basis of these
> non-patented inventions. How do you explain that ?
>
> I wish someone had patented fire and sold it to the rest of the world. You
> and me would be paying money to light a match.
>
>
>> I guess if you havent invented something and had it stolen then you have
>> nothing to worry about or to care for ....which is most of us.
>>
>
> pharmecutical patent regimes in particular go to ridiculous extents which
> make sense only to americans (e.g. patenting at a molecular level ...
> patenting processes etc... ). nowadays independent discovery is called
> theft. do you think fire was disovered only in one place ... or did writing
> originate only from civilization ... or was the power of speech discovered
> by one man ?
>