IP law saves lives (sometimes)

As discussed in the previous post, the original goal of IP law was to encourage innovation and creativity for the good of society. When we think about IP these days, we mostly think of copyrights for artistic creations: movies, music, books, etc. However, some of the greatest benefits of intellectual property laws comes in the realm of scientific and technological innovations. The incentive provided by the possibility of profiting from tremendous advances in engineering, medicine and information technology has produced some of the greatest achievements of our modern society. One of these achievements is modern pharmaceuticals to help treat and even cure terrible diseases.

However, we must remember the original goal of IP laws: the benefit of society. Patents for new medicines encourage companies to invest in finding new drugs to treat diseases. But when those treatments are so valuable that the market price for them makes them unattainable for most people who need the drugs, are society's interests really served by maintaining an absolutist stance on the inviolability of intellectual property? How are society's interests served by the deaths of 17 million Africans, when we have the AIDS drugs to treat them? Are our current laws really fulfilling the goals of IP law, or just filling the pockets of big corporations?