It is often said that without patents there would be no incentive for the company to produce, despite its recognized inefficiency. What do you think about it?

My microeconomics professor often tells us that without patents many companies would not be interested in spending on investment It is assumed that there would be no incentive (I copy his reasoning) because companies would not see it profitable to make high investment quotas to, finally, obtain, for example, a drug that, a posteriori, all companies can copy, so that their benefits are not so many, because as the drug is copied, its prices fall and this causes that the company's profit is not such that it justifies such a large investment.

I understand that this is often called the problem of the public good, which basically boils down to the fact that a person who performs a public good is trapped by a profitability trap, since doing a public good requires doing it for everyone, which requires a large amount of effort and, nevertheless, the benefit that others receive, who did not have to deposit the effort, in front of you, who deposited it, is much higher than yours, making your benefit negligible in comparison.

This argument is often used to justify the State in decisions, in fact, that affect a very large public and where resolving everything through negotiation is complex.

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