BUSINESS Ethics Flashpoint 8.1 The Creator/Consumer Balance Patents for pharmaceuticals and other inventions that improve or save lives focus a spotlight on the inherent tension between the benets for the creator and the benets to the consumer. That tension is at the heart of intellectual property law. By law, patents allow the companies that hold them to charge whatever the market will bear for their exclusive products. But should they? The news in 2015 and 2016 was lled with stories of drug makers who suddenly and seemingly without explanation or need raised the prices of drugs to treat serious diseases or respond to anaphylactic reactions. The price hikes were greeted by howls of protest by the public and hearings in Congress, questioning why the law would allow such actions