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  3. Has the US Patent System Gone Too Far? When Samuel Hopkins came up with a method for improving the production of potash, a c

Has the US Patent System Gone Too Far? When Samuel Hopkins came up with a method for improving the production of potash, a c

admin2013-07-11  30
问题                     Has the US Patent System Gone Too Far?
    When Samuel Hopkins came up with a method for improving the production of potash, a critical resource used to make glass, soap, and soil fertilize, it was probably just the kind of invention that President George Washington had in mind when he created the US patent system. It’s unclear, however, how Washington would feel about America’s 6, 368, 227th patent. Issued to Steven Olson, it protects a "method of swinging on a swing.. . in which a user positioned on a standard swing suspended by two chains from a horizontal tree branch induces side to side motion by pulling alternately on one chain and then the other."
    To critics of the current US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), this kind of patent demonstrates everything that’s wrong with the patent system today. "We have too many patents being granted," according to Daniel Ravicher, who is the Legal Director for the Software Freedom Law Center. "There still remains this belief that the more patents we have, the better society is. A more soph-isticated and reasonable belief is that there have to be some patents, but we need to assure that they are legitimately worthy."
    As long as large corporations held the patents, things remained fairly peaceful. There has always been a kind of uneasy "mutually assured destruction" standoff among giants. But as certain high-tech firms failed, many of their patents were acquired by intellectual-property holding companies, whose only business was to use these patents to make money. In other cases, independent inventors have patented what some consider obvious ideas. "We believe that companies that don’t make a significant contribution, in terms of innovation, have exploited the existing patent system to play hold-up games with those who are, in effect, innovating in the marketplace." says Rob Tiller, assistant counsel and vice president for intellectual property for software maker Red Hat.
    Part of the problem is that the current system is overloaded. "The flood of patent applications has overwhelmed the resources of the patent office," says Mr.Tiller. "I think that there have been many grants of patents that a fuller, more careful review would probably show should not have been granted."
    Last October brought one of the most significant and still evolving changes to the patent landscape. In a case known as In re Bilski, a court rejected a patent for a business method of hedging investment risks. In its decision, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit restricted patents to two specific areas: an improvement "tied to a particular machine" and a method that "transforms a particular article into a different state or thing." This standard creates a lot of uncertainty for companies innovating in less tangible industries.
    Meanwhile, companies will continue to run afoul of old patents, ones that would fail to meet the new criteria. And patent-rights advocate Herbert Wamsley, executive director of the Intellectual Property Owners Association, makes the point that there will need to be further refinement through future court decisions about exactly what does and doesn’t fall into the patentable category.
The author uses the example of Samuel Hopkins to show US patent system’s______.
选项 A、purpose
B、importance
C、influence
D、origin
答案A
解析 本题考查作者意图。根据题中关键词Samuel Hopkins定位到文章第一段。该段第一句指出，霍普金斯提出的改良生产一种关乎国计民生的重要资源的方法是华盛顿总统建立专利制度旨在保护的对象(just the kind of invention．．．when he created the US patent system)。第二句转折指出，不知华盛顿看到如今美国第6，368，227个专利作何感想。接下来该段详细描述了这项专利保护的对象竟然是人们日常生活中再熟悉不过的荡秋千的方法。第二段在这两个例子的基础上做出总结：这种专利权的授予表明现在的专利制度存在弊病，被授权的专利太多了。可见，作者以霍普金斯的发明为例是为了说明“美国专利制度的初衷是保护像它一样有价值的对象”，从而与现在美国专利权近乎泛滥、保护对象没有多大价值的现状形成强烈对比。[A]为最恰当选项。作者没有从霍普金斯的例子推出美国专利制度的重要性或影响，故排除[B]、[C]选项。[D]选项有很强的迷惑性，因为霍普金斯的发明确实是美国历史上的第一项专利。但作者并不是为了说明美国专利的起源，而是为了交待建立专利制度的目的
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