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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  42
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.
【F3】
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答案谷歌收购摩托罗拉的背后也有为了节省不必要的诉讼费用方面的考虑：谷歌之前还对专利心存怀疑，现在却为与智能手机有关的一堆法律诉讼所困；通过收购摩托罗拉，其庞大的专利组合就会使其在谈判中占据更加有利的位置。
解析 该句由冒号分为前后两部分。冒号前的句子如果直译，就是“在摩托罗拉收购案的背后是这些费用”，解释不通。通读上下文后，我们可以发现，谷歌之所以收购摩托罗拉主要是因为它所拥有的几万项专利，而上市公司因为侵犯专利引发的诉讼案所花费的费用，要比自己拥有专利本身所赚得的费用高出许多，因此，这句话采用意译的方式比较合适，即：摩托罗拉收购案的背后隐藏着一个重要的原因，那就是谷歌想要因此免除或减少这些因诉讼产生的不必要开支。冒号后面的句子中的be caught up in可翻译为“为……所困”，a tangle of意为“一团，一堆”。
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