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Opinion: Let’s not put special taxes on successful innovators

Some inventors aren't motivated by financial considerations and give their patents or profits away. The rest of us need incentives

In 1921, Canadians Frederick Banting and Charles Best discovered insulin and in doing so changed the fates of millions of diabetics. They sold their patent for it for the princely sum of $2. (True, $2 then was the equivalent of $35 now. But still.) Thirty years after Banting and Best, Canadian George Klein perfected the electronic wheelchair and gave away his patent for that breakthrough for nothing. All three researchers could have earned great piles of money but chose not to.

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