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  3. On August 15th Google bid $12.5 billion for Motorola Mobility, a troubled American maker of mobile phones. If the purchase goes

On August 15th Google bid $12.5 billion for Motorola Mobility, a troubled American maker of mobile phones. If the purchase goes

admin2015-03-25  60
问题     On August 15th Google bid $12.5 billion for Motorola Mobility, a troubled American maker of mobile phones. If the purchase goes through, it will be Google’s largest ever acquisition, almost doubling the size of its workforce.【F1】The attraction for the Internet giant is not the handset-maker’s 19,000 employees nor its 11% share of America’s smartphone market, but its portfolio of 17,000 patents, with another 7,500 in the pipeline. This will bolster Google’s puny arsenal of around 2,000 patents, hugely strengthening its position in current and future legal battles with its more heavily armed industry rivals.
    【F2】The basic idea of patents is a good one; an inventor is granted a limited monopoly(20 years, in America and elsewhere)over a technology in return for disclosing the details of its workings, so that others can build upon the invention. Advanced technologies are thus made widely available, rather than remaining trade secrets, spurring further innovation
    In recent years, however, the patent system has been stifling innovation rather than encouraging it. A study in 2008 found that American public companies’ total profits from patents in 1999 were about $4 billion—but that the associated litigation costs were $14 billion.【F3】Such costs are behind the Motorola bid; Google, previously skeptical about patents, is caught up in a tangle of lawsuits relating to smartphones and wants Motorola’s huge portfolio to strengthen its negotiating position.
    What has gone wrong? The prizing of patent quantity rather than quality is one cause for concern. A second is the rise in dubious patents, particularly in the fields of software and business methods, which should never have been awarded.【F4】This leads to the third; the growing problem of "patent trolls", or firms that treat patents as lottery tickets and file expensive, time-consuming lawsuits against companies that have supposedly infringed them.
    Fortunately, patent-reform act is about to be passed in America, but it has been so watered down that it will fail to make much difference. Three much bolder reforms are needed.
    First, patents in fields where innovation moves fast and is relatively cheap—like computing— should have shorter terms than those in areas where it is slower and more expensive—like pharmaceuticals.【F5】The divergent interests of patent-holders in different industries have held up reform, but there is no reason why they should not be treated differently; such distinctions are made in other areas of intellectual-property law. Second, the bar for obtaining a patent, particularly for software or business methods, should be much higher(as it is in other countries), and the process of re-evaluating bad patents should be more open and efficient. Finally, there should be greater disclosure requirements of the ownership of patent portfolios, and patent cases should be heard by specialized courts(as happens in other areas of law), rather than nonexpert juries in advantageous jurisdictions in Texas. That would make life harder for trolls. These fixes would help America’s patent system encourage innovation rather than litigation.
【F4】
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答案而这又导致了第三个让人忧虑的原因：日益增长的“专利蟑螂”(又称专利流氓：形容积极发动专利侵权诉讼的公司)，或者说是一些公司把专利当作彩票，然后向那些有可能侵犯到其发展的公司提出费用昂贵并且耗时的法律诉讼。
解析 该句为复合句，冒号后的成分为解释说明。该句可采用顺译法。根据上下文，the third指的是“引起人们忧虑的第三个原因”，故需将省略的名词加上；the growing problem of后接了两个名词：patent trolls和firms，前者翻译成“专利蟑螂”，后者的“公司”是对前面“patent trolls”的具体解释，因此or可翻译成“或者说是”。file against是动词词组，可解释为“向……提出(诉讼)”。
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