Yes, in any normal commercial venture, those are the normal procedures for commercializing something, which are the investment. Re-reading back to the top of this thread, I see this spun out specifically from a one-liner about research by professors at public universities. The funding sources for professors at public universities is varied (depends on what funding they have managed to gather and what strings were attached, and what they were intended for), and the degree that the results of their research is clinically applicable also varies. A researcher may discover that a certain receptor on a cell's surface responds to a specific molecular structure, but this is far from being a treatment. Depending on who funded a particular research study, the results may be pre-assigned to a private entity, or may become public information. It all depends on how the research was commissioned. In any case, university researchers don't usually create new drugs, they discover relationships; they just don't typically have that mandate (as far as I am aware, which admittedly isn't that much).
Incidentally, patents are not to cover "invention" costs, they are so that inventors can get the rewards of invention while at the same time exposing their invention, rewards and costs are not the same thing. For drugs, public exposure is a necessity of the way we require FDA approval; since without such regulation, drug related litigation would ultimately end up in open court anyway to prove liability or negligence, it has been deemed a public good to do this public exposure prior to market introduction, and require a degree of pre-approval (that we assign directly to a government agency).
In the US of A, the FDA grants neither a monopoly, nor a patent. The FDA's purpose in new drug development is the declaratory judgment regarding the safety or applicability of a drug. It is perfectly possible to get a patent, but fail FDA approval. It is also possible that the process to produce a drug at scale is itself a novel application or invention and itself patentable (though that may also need FDA approval separately from the drug treatment).
It is perfectly possible to get a patent, but fail FDA approval.
I believe this happened to Eli Lilly yesterday.
EDIT: Not sure it was Lilly- I heard the news on the radio this morning and I can't find the source on the news sites. Annoying.
Incidentally, patents are not to cover "invention" costs, they are so that inventors can get the rewards of invention while at the same time exposing their invention, rewards and costs are not the same thing. For drugs, public exposure is a necessity of the way we require FDA approval; since without such regulation, drug related litigation would ultimately end up in open court anyway to prove liability or negligence, it has been deemed a public good to do this public exposure prior to market introduction, and require a degree of pre-approval (that we assign directly to a government agency).
In the US of A, the FDA grants neither a monopoly, nor a patent. The FDA's purpose in new drug development is the declaratory judgment regarding the safety or applicability of a drug. It is perfectly possible to get a patent, but fail FDA approval. It is also possible that the process to produce a drug at scale is itself a novel application or invention and itself patentable (though that may also need FDA approval separately from the drug treatment).