Booby Prize: Why Replacing Patents With Prizes Would Harm Innovation
This article was originally published in RPM Report
Executive Summary
Presidential candidate Senator Sanders has proposed replacing patents with a government run scheme that offers prize money to innovators who create new medicines. This approach misunderstands the vital role of patents in society especially for new medicines. Using prizes for new medicines -- rather than patents -- risks assigning to the government the role of picking winners and losers in science.