Capitalists & Ben Sasse Use U.S. Patent Office To Monopolize Profit From Public Health In Pandemics

[ancianita]

Keep our eye on the corporate capture of our government.

And if we see something, we need to say something.

Nebraska. Home of Republican Campaign Finance Chair Pete Ricketts and Warren Buffett, right up the road from Kansas, home of Charles Koch and the USDA. The "Heartland."

If the Electronic Frontier Foundation weren't constantly yelling about this front and center in social media -- Facebook -- Americans wouldn't even know from the rest of media just what's being done behind our backs.

Rachel should seriously cover this.

Governments around the world are taking steps to make sure that private corporations don’t use the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to make unjustified monopoly profits. They’re doing that by ensuring that governments can override patents and issue compulsory licenses for COVID-19 related treatments, vaccines, and tools....

But in the U.S., lobbyists and lawyers for patent owners are pushing our government to move in the exact opposite direction. And they may succeed.

Last week, Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) introduced a bill that gives 10 extra years of patent rights (on top of the usual 20 years) to any “new or existing pharmaceutical, medical device, or other process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter.”

The patent rights grab, included in a bill that’s ostensibly about limiting medical lawsuits, also applies to improvements on existing technology...

... the fruits of any research into COVID-19 in the U.S. will rest on an enormous bedrock of public funding.

The third stimulus bill gave billions of dollars to research on COVID-19 therapies and vaccines, including nearly $1 billion in research money given to the National Institutes of Health, as well more than $75 million research funding to each of the National Science Foundation, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Department of Energy.

Part of the $27 billion going to the Health and Human Services Department also goes research and development of vaccines and therapeutics.

That’s all on top of the earlier $8.3 billion coronavirus bill, which authorized more than $3 billion for vaccine research.

The public has the right to benefit from that use of public research money, not see it locked up by patents.

In this case, the correct price point for a coronavirus vaccine is already clear: it should be free. When Jonas Salk created a polio vaccine, he understood it had to be owned by “the people,” and not subject to patents of any kind. Salk worked with both private and public funding to research and develop his solution to the devastating polio problem. He wasn’t opposed to profit or capitalism, but Salk understood clearly that low-cost or no-cost access to the vaccine was vital to the success of his enterprise.

We should be looking to limit, not expand, patent rights for technologies related to this health emergency.

We’ve proposed a bolder use of 28 U.S.C. 1498, which would stop patent owners who believe they have infringed patents from suing and getting injunctions on companies or nonprofit researchers working on COVID-19.

Instead, those patent owners would be limited to suing the government. Canada’s COVID-19 bill, allowing the government to step in on patent rights during the emergency, is another good example.

The government could compel companies and institutions that receive public funding to fight COVID-19 make the resulting IP widely available, using models like the Open COVID Pledge and Open COVID License. Those documents were created by a group of scientists and lawyers concerned that IP obstacles could get in the way of the fight against the disease.

Pro-Patent Lobbyists Can and Will Exploit This Crisis

Why is a huge patent giveaway even in this bill, which purports to be about limiting lawsuits against medical providers? More patents, with longer terms, will lead to more lawsuits against health care companies and workers.

And these new patents won’t be limited to traditional medical technologies. Sasse’s bill applies to patents on any “process, machine, [or] manufacture” that are used to treat COVID-19. That will surely sprawl into exactly the type of software patents that have fuzzy boundaries and tend to benefit lawyers, not inventors.

An attempt to extend patent terms may be the first attempt by patent owners to profit from the COVID-19 pandemic, but it won’t be the last.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/lengthening-patent-terms-10-years-exactly-wrong-response-covid-19?fbclid=IwAR0ti3BXSYVPPySxKxPlWcIm6ZeVeFii-8gAaANcU7fs12JIU4L28y1b9O8

[Loki Liesmith]

1. Capitalists? I'm a capitalist.

As far as I know Ben Sasse and Ingabe never collaborated on anything.

[ancianita]

2. Please explain. I've no idea where you're going with these two ideas.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

3. They expect government to work for them, but want everyone else to pay for government.

These predators are all for having government protect their profits gained from work paid for by us, through government.

[ancianita]

4. Exactly. They decided a long time ago that if they said nothing, the public-host would never know.

While govt is of, by, and for the people, The People learned -- maybe too late, after such handovers became too entrenched -- that watchdogs and whistleblowers had better be the 'verify' part of "trust but verify."

So secrecy hides the capitalist embezzlement system (pay no attention to any men behind any curtain!) AND the human commodification system, while it distracts with lies:
look at the criminals among you!
the terrorists among you!
the uppity women among you!
the hoaxsters and liars among you!
You get what you deserve!
No work, no eat!
Here, have some trickle-down, sports, comedy, nature, and church while you can!

Don't get sick! Thoughts and prayers!