@mer @SuperDicq @iro_miya >it's also important to note that drugs are subject to patents, not copyright
I'm well aware, which is why I made sure to not mention proprietary software and proprietary medicine in the same sentence.

>patents have to be granted and can be refused
The issue is that patent offices are financially incentivized to approve as many patents as fast as possible and to refuse as little as possible.

Checking for prior art with drug patents is at least somewhat feasible, as you can look up the chemical structure and the condition it is intended to treat, but even then patent offices are known for granting another patent on the same drug with slight structural changes, which results in the patent term effectively being longer than 20 years (there was even one case where the atmosphere near drug factories had been seeded with crystals of the newer form of the drug, meaning when you tried to synthesize the old form that had finally had its patent expire, all you got was the new form (the patent lawyers loved the profit from that one)).

>the more people actually use the drug, the more reason there is for the state to liberate its use.
If the state wants drugs to be used to cure people and also wants to keep drug patents, the state has no excuse but to limit the patent term solely to an determined percentage profit over research costs, which terminates as soon as that is reached, or after 20 years (or terminates immediately if the company is cooking the books when it comes to research costs or sale profits).