Patents and the high cost of medications
"In 1421 builders of the Florence Cathedral needed marble for its construction. Filippo Brunelleschi devised a boat that would carry the heavy rock up the Arno River and he was granted the right to exclude all new means of transport on the Arno for three years.” Historians claim this was the first modern patent. "In 1449 English King Henry VI granted John of Utynam a 20 years monopoly for a stained glass-making process. " During the reign of Queen Anne 1702-1714 the British Crown required a patentee to provide a written description of the invention to be patented and the manner in which it was to be performed. The U.S. constitution gave the government the right to issue patents “ ...limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings,” and in 1790 "Congress passed the first patent statute." To be eligible for a patent an invention must be novel—...