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  3. On August 24th an American jury found that Samsung had infringed six patents and ordered it to pay Apple more than $ 1 billion i

On August 24th an American jury found that Samsung had infringed six patents and ordered it to pay Apple more than $ 1 billion i

admin2014-06-13  3
问题     On August 24th an American jury found that Samsung had infringed six patents and ordered it to pay Apple more than $ 1 billion in damages, one of the steepest awards yet seen in a patent case.
    Some see thinly disguised protectionism in this decision. That does the jury a disservice; its members seem to have stuck to the job of working out whether patent infringements had occurred. The much bigger questions raised by this case are whether all Apple’s innovations should have been granted a patent in the first place; and the degree to which technology stalwarts and start-ups alike should be able to base their designs on the breakthroughs of others.
    It is useful to recall why patents exist. The system was established as a trade-off that provides a public benefit: the state agrees to grant a limited monopoly to an inventor in return for disclosing how the technology works. To qualify, an innovation must be novel, useful and non-obvious, which earns the inventor 20 years of exclusivity. "Design patents", which cover appearances and are granted after a simpler review process, are valid for 14 years.
    The dispute between Apple and Samsung is less over how the devices work and more over their look and feel. At issue are features like the ability to zoom into an image with a double finger tap, pinching gestures, and the visual "rubber band" effect when you scroll to the end of a page. The case even extends to whether the device and its on-screen icons are allowed to have rounded corners. To be sure, some of these things were terrific improvements over what existed before the iPhone’s arrival, but to award a monopoly right to finger gestures and rounded rectangles is to stretch the definition of "novel" and "non-obvious" to breaking-point.
    A proliferation of patents harms the public in three ways. First, it means that technology companies will compete more at the courtroom than in the marketplace—precisely what seems to be happening. Second, it hampers follow-on improvements by firms that implement an existing technology but build upon it as well. Third, it fuels many of the American patent system’s broader problems, such as patent trolls(speculative lawsuits by patent-holders who have no intention of actually making anything); defensive patenting(acquiring patents mainly to pre-empt the risk of litigation, which raises business costs); and "innovation gridlock"(the difficulty of combining multiple technologies to create a single new product because too many small patents are spread among too many players).
    A world of fewer but more robust patents, combined with a more efficient method of settling disputes, would not just serve the interests of the public but also help innovators like Apple. "It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done—and then try to bring those things in to what you’re doing," said Jobs in a television documentary, Triumph of the Nerds, in 1996. "And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas. "
The patent system was originally meant to highlight______.
选项 A、the interest of the public
B、the benefit of innovators
C、the value of novel ideas
D、the worth of great designs
答案A
解析 第三段指出，专利制度当初是为公共利益而进行的折衷：授予发明者一定的独占权，从而换取发明者对技术的公开。[A]选项是对该内容的概括，为正确项。
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