Insulin is a bad example because its manufacturing methods are relatively old, but the entire point of patents is to avoid trade secrets. The idea is that inventors share how they do something exactly, and their invention gets legally protected for a certain amount of time before it becomes available for everyone. The problem is capitalism is capitalism, and so it incentivizes abuse, so corporations will flood the system with patents that have as little detail as legally allowed and try to apply them in the broadest way possible. The pharmaceutical industry in particular also seems to have a problem with companies patenting minor tweaks on their products when the previous patent is about to expire to keep a monopoly, and then dialing up the propaganda against their previous product up to 11.
Insulin is a bad example because its manufacturing methods are relatively old, but the entire point of patents is to avoid trade secrets. The idea is that inventors share how they do something exactly, and their invention gets legally protected for a certain amount of time before it becomes available for everyone. The problem is capitalism is capitalism, and so it incentivizes abuse, so corporations will flood the system with patents that have as little detail as legally allowed and try to apply them in the broadest way possible. The pharmaceutical industry in particular also seems to have a problem with companies patenting minor tweaks on their products when the previous patent is about to expire to keep a monopoly, and then dialing up the propaganda against their previous product up to 11.