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.
No.
Patent rights are private property.
Yes and no.
When you have developed a drug you receive a patent on it. This allows you to make the drug exclusively for a certain amount of time. The key here is A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF TIME.
A patent is not forever.
This drug was not under patent and then suddenly the US government decided to award the patent to a company who had nothing to do with the drug.
Sorry, but that is not the way it works.
You are correct that 40 years of protection is unusual. In fact it does not exist. Except for some reason for a few years under Obama these orphan drugs were somehow placed back under patent and awarded to companies that had nothing to do with them.
That is not capitalism.
Thank you, W Tell... YOu beat me to it.
Also Teddy Bear’s statement that I (and you) are defending socialism is a bit off mark.
When is defending private property rights considered to be “socialism?” That’s a stretch.
So even considering this case where the company bought the rights to the drug, I’m not defending socialism.