Article One of the U.S. Constitution includes the intellectual property clause. Congress can “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for a limited time to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” Two years later, in 1790, the U.S. Patent Office opened, rewarding the creation of new technologies, inventions, and ideas with government-granted monopolies, protected from competitors. After more than two centuries of practice, we are still struggling with this reward system, asking ourselves whether it is sufficiently and correctly motivating or skewed to produce problematic pricing and ruin our chances for health equity.
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