They got the right to the patient which is not the same thing and they were not the first company under Obama and Co who somehow managed to get a patient on a very old drug with limited market that they did not develop.
You are defending socialism yourself when you think that this is ok. The government should not be able to sell the patient rights to a drug.
It most certainly is the same thing. Patent rights are private property.
Let's use Merck as an example. If every stockholder in Merck sold his stock tomorrow and new buyers were found, then the company would be owned by entirely new owners. Would that invalidate their patents? Of course not.
It's no different if Merck decides to sell some of its property to a different company, no matter how new such a company might be.
Forty years of protection for a patent is unusual. Typical might be under twenty years. That means that patients today benefit from every medical development made up until 1998. That's an incredible benefit. In twenty years, EVERYONE will benefit from most of what is available today. Why destroy a system of development with such a brilliant outcome in order to benefit the few who fall in the cracks? It doesn't make sense; it just feels good.