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"Conquest by Patents" Patents are a form of intellectual property rights ofte

游客2025-02-05  35
问题 "Conquest by Patents"
   Patents are a form of intellectual property rights often touted as a means to give ’incentive and reward’ to inventors. But they’re also a cause for massive protests by farmers, numerous lawsuits by transnational corporations and indigenous peoples, and countless rallies and declarations by members of civil society. It is impossible to understand why they can have all these effects unless you first recognize that patents are about the control of technology and the protection of competitive advantage.
   Lessons from History
   In the 1760s, the Englishman Richard Arkwright invented the water-powered spinning frame, a machine destined to bring cotton-spinning out of the home and into the factory. It was an invention which made Britain a world-class power in the manufacture of cloth. To pretect its competitive advantage and ensure the market for manufactured cloth in British colonies, Parliament enacted a series of restrictive measures including the prohibition of the export of Arkwright machinery or the emigration of any workers who had worked in factories using it. From 1774 on, those caught sending Arkwright machines or workers abroad from England were subject to fines and 12 years in jail.
   In 1790, Samuel Slater, who had worked for years in the Arkwright mills, left England for the New World disguised as a farmer. A   He thereby enabled the production of commercial-grade cotton cloth in the New World and put the U.S. firmly on the road to the Industrial Revolution and economic independence. B   Slater was highly rewarded for his achievement. C   He is still deemed the ’father of American manufacturing’. D    To the English, however, he was an intellectual property thief.
   Interestingly, patent protection was a part of U.S. law at the time of Slater’s deed. But that protection would only extend to U.S. innovations. It is worth remembering that until the 1970s it was understood, even accepted, that countries only enforced those patent protections that served their national interest. When the young United States pirated the intellectual property of Europe—and Slater wasn’t the only infringer—people in the U.S. saw the theft as a justifiable response to England’s refusal to transfer its technology.
   By the early 1970s, the situation had changed. U.S. industry demanded greater protection for its idea-based products—such as computers and biotechnology—for which it still held the worldwide lead. Together with its like-minded industrial allies, the U.S. pushed for the inclusion of intellectual property clauses, including standards for patents, in international trade agreements.
   When U.S. business groups explained the ’need’ for patents and trademarks in trade agreements, they alleged $40-60 billion losses due to intellectual property piracy; they blamed the losses on Third World pirates; they discussed how piracy undermined the incentive to invest; and they claimed that the quality of pirated products was lower than the real thing and was costing lives.
   The opposition pointed out that many of the products made in the industrial world, almost all its food crops and a high percentage of its medicines had originated in plant and animal germplasm taken from the developing world. First, knowledge of the material and how to use it was stolen, and later the material itself was taken. For all this, they said, barely a cent of royalties had been paid. Such unacknowledged and uncompensated appropriation they named ’biopiracy’ and they reasoned that trade agreement patent rules were likely to facilitate more theft of their genetic materials. Their claim that materials ’collected’ in the developing world were stolen, elicited a counterclaim that these were ’natural’ or ’raw’ materials and therefore did not qualify for patents. This in turn induced a counter-explanation that such materials were not ’raw’ but rather the result of millennia of study, selection, protection, conservation, development and refinement by communities of Majority World and indigenous peoples.
   Others pointed out that trade agreements which forced the adoption of unsuitable notions of property and creativity—not to mention an intolerable commercial relationship to nature—were not only insulting but also exceedingly costly. To a developing world whose creations might not qualify for patents and royalties, there was first of all the cost of unrealized profit. Secondly, there was the cost of added expense for goods from the industrialized world. For most of the people on the planet, the whole patenting process would lead to greater and greater indebtedness; for them, the trade agreements would amount to ’conquest by patents’—no matter what the purported commercial benefits.
   Glossary
   intellectual property: an invention or composition that belongs to the person who created it [br] Based on information in paragraph 7, which of the following best explains the term "biopiracy"?
选项 A、A conspiracy by farmers
B、The theft of plants and animals
C、Secret trade agreements
D、Natural resources in the biosphere
答案 B
解析 "Such unacknowledged and uncompensated appropriation they named ’biopiracy.’" Choices A, C, and D are not part of the author’s definition.
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