Ideas fuel the economy. Today’s patent systems are a rotten way of rewarding them 创新推动经济发展。但是，如今的专利体系却并没有对创新起到奖励作用。 Aug 8th 2015 | From the print edition IN 1970 the United States recognised the potential of crop science by broadening the scope of patents in agriculture. Patents are supposed to reward inventiveness, so that should have galvanised progress. Yet, despite providing extra protection, that change and a further broadening of the regime in the 1980s led neither to more private research into wheat nor to an increase in yields. Overall, the productivity of American agriculture continued its gentle upward climb, much as it had before. 1970年，美国通过拓宽专利在农业的范围，发现了作物科学的潜力。专利是用于奖励创造发明的，所以专利的发展理应前程似锦。然而，尽管提供了额外的保护，专利发展的良好势头却起了变化。并且，20世纪80年代对农业专利体系的进一步拓展，既没有使更多的私人研究进入小麦研究领域，也没有增加作物的产量。总体来说，美国农业的生产力继续缓慢增长，就和以前没有专利体系时一样。 In other industries, too, stronger patent systems seem not to lead to more innovation (seearticle). That alone would be disappointing, but the evidence suggests something far worse. 这种情况在其它国家同样存在，更强大的专利体系似乎并未引起更多创新（见图表）。这一点就已经让人失望，可是证据表明还有比这更糟糕的事情。 Patents are supposed to spread knowledge, by obliging holders to lay out their innovation for all to see; they often fail, because patent-lawyers are masters of obfuscation. Instead, the system has created a parasitic ecology of trolls and defensive patent-holders, who aim to block innovation, or at least to stand in its way unless they can grab a share of the spoils. An early study found that newcomers to the semiconductor business had to buy licences from incumbents for as much as $200m. Patents should spur bursts of innovation; instead, they are used to lock in incumbents’ advantages. 专利是用来传播知识的。热情的专利持有人可以把创新成果展示给所有人看；但是因为专利律师是一群头脑迷糊的“砖家”，所以专利持有人的展示常以失败告终。反而，专利系统却创造了一个由敲诈勒索者和保守专利持有人组成的寄生环境，这群人旨在封锁创新之路，或者至少是挡在创新之上的劫匪，不捞一点钱绝不善罢甘休。一项早期研究发现：进入半导体行业的新人，必须要花费高达2亿美元的许可证才能进入该行业。专利本来用来刺激创新的；但是这里，它们却成为某些在位人士的牟利工具。 The patent system is expensive. A decade-old study reckons that in 2005, without the temporary monopoly patents bestow, America might have saved three-quarters of its $210 billion bill for prescription drugs. The expense would be worth it if patents brought innovation and prosperity. They don’t. 专利体系价格昂贵。一项长达十年的研究估计：如果没有授予临时垄断性专利，2005年美国可能会从2100亿美元处方药物账单中省下四分之三的钱。但要是专利系统真的带来了创新和繁荣，这笔钱花的也值。然而事实并非如此。 Innovation fuels the abundance of modern life. From Google’s algorithms to a new treatment for cystic fibrosis, it underpins the knowledge in the “knowledge economy”. The cost of the innovation that never takes place because of the flawed patent system is incalculable. Patent protection is spreading, through deals such as the planned Trans-Pacific Partnership, which promises to cover one-third of world trade. The aim should be tofix the system, not make it more pervasive弥漫，广泛. 创新丰富了现代生活。从谷歌的运算法则到治疗囊性纤维化的新疗法，创新巩固了知识在“知识经济”中的地位。还有些创新，却因为专利系统的缺陷从未诞生。而这些本该发生未发生的创新，其成本是无法估量的。专利保护的覆盖面通过一些协议变得越来越广，比如《跨太平洋伙伴关系》协议，它承诺要覆盖全世界三分之一的贸易。但是，我们的目标是修理好专利体系本身的问题，而不是盲目扩大专利范围。 The English patent 英国的专利 One radical answer would be to abolish patents altogether—indeed, in 19th-century Britain, that was this newspaper’s preference. But abolition flies in the face of the intuition that if you create a drug or invent a machine, you have a claim on your work just as you would if you had built a house. Should someone move into your living room uninvited, you would feel justifiably aggrieved. So do those who have their ideas stolen. 根本的解决方法也许完全废除专利体系——的确，19世纪英国的经济学人报纸就提倡这么做。但是后来这个计划取消了。因为直觉告诉我们：如果你发明了一种药品或创造了一部机器，那么你对成果就有要求权；这就像你对你的房子有要求权一样。如果有人不请自来住进你的房间，你理所当然会感到被侵害。如果有人偷走你的思想，也会有同样的感觉。 Yet no property rights are absolute. When the benefits are large enough, governments routinely override them—by seizing money through taxation, demolishing houses to make way for roads and controlling what you can do with your land. Striking the balance between the claim of the individual and the interests of society is hard. But with ideas, the argument that the government should force the owners of intellectual property to share is especially strong. 不过，没有人对财产拥有绝对的权利。当好处够大时，政府常常会不顾及个人权利，它们通过税收捞钱，通过拆除房屋为修路争取土地，他们还会控制你对自己土地的使用权。把握个人权利和社会利益之间的平衡是一件难事。但若涉及到思想，针对政府强迫知识产权持有人分享知识的问题，人们常会有非常激烈的争论。 One reason is that sharing ideas will not cause as much harm to the property owner as sharing physical property does. Two farmers cannot harvest the same crops, but an imitator can reproduce an idea without depriving its owner of the original. The other reason is that sharing brings huge benefits to society. These spring partly from the wider use of the idea itself. If only a few can afford a treatment, the diseased will suffer, despite the trivially small cost of actually manufacturing the pills to cure them. Sharing also leads to extra innovation. Ideas overlap. Inventions depend on earlier creative advances. There would be no jazz without blues; no iPhone without touchscreens. The signs are that innovation today is less about entirely novel breakthroughs, and more about the clever combination and extension of existing ideas. 其中原因之一是，分享知识给知识产权持有人造成的伤害，不会像分享物质产权造成的伤害那么多。两个农民不能收获同一片庄稼，但是知识模仿者却可以在不剥夺原始知识发明者的情况下，复制那个知识。另外一个原因是，共享能给社会带来巨大的好处。这种好处部分来源于对知识本身的广泛运用。如果只有一少部分人能承担治疗费用，许多患者就会遭殃，哪怕其实这种治疗药物的生产成本微乎其微。而且，共享引发附加创新，使各种发明相互交织、相互促进。新发明建立在前人创造性工作之上。没有蓝调也就没有爵士；没有触摸屏就没有苹果手机。种种迹象表明：如今的创新很少是完全零起步的突破，更多的是对现有知识的巧妙结合和扩展。 Governments have long recognised that these arguments justify limits on patents. Still, despite repeated attempts to reform it, the system fails. Can it be made to work better? 政府早就意识到，这些争论会证实专利体系存在缺陷。然而，尽管反复尝试改革专利体系，但专利系统仍然很失败。专利体系究竟能不能改革好呢？ Light-bulb moment 灵光乍现 Reformers should be guided by an awareness of their own limitations. Because ideas are intangible and innovation is complex, Solomon himself would find it hard to adjudicate between competing claims. Under-resourced patent-officers will always struggle against well-heeled patent-lawyers. Over the years, the regime is likely to fall victim to lobbying and special pleading. Hence a clear, rough-and-ready patent system is better than an elegant but complex one. In government as in invention, simplicity is a strength. 改革专利系统的人应该意识到他们自身的局限性。因为知识是无形的、创新是复杂的，因此即便是所罗门自己也难以评判各种主张的好坏。资源不足的专利官员常常要与有钱有势的专利律师抗争，导致这些年来，专利体系可能已经沦为游说和诡辩的牺牲品。因此，一个清晰、简单、实用的专利系统会比一个高雅却复杂的系统要好。政府工作就和创新发明一样，简单就是力量。 One aim should be to rout the trolls and the blockers. Studies have found that 40-90% of patents are never exploited or licensed out by their owners. Patents should come with a blunt “use it or lose it” rule, so that they expire if the invention is not brought to market. Patents should also be easier to challenge without the expense of a full-blown court case. The burden of proof for overturning a patent in court should be lowered. 专利系统改革的目标之一，就是应当彻底击败勒索或阻碍创新的东西。研究发现，40-90%的专利从来没有被它们的持有者有效利用或授权开发。专利应当采用“用之或弃之”这条直接简单的原则。也就是说，如果专利发明不能用于市场，就应该到期作废。另外，对专利的质疑应当有更容易的方式，而不是非得大张旗鼓地闹上法庭。并且，在法庭上推翻一项专利的举证责任应当减轻。 Patents should reward those who work hard on big, fresh ideas, rather than those who file the paperwork on a tiddler. The requirement for ideas to be “non-obvious” must be strengthened. Apple should not be granted patents on rectangular tablets with rounded corners; Twitter does not deserve a patent on its pull-to-refresh feed. 专利应该用来奖励那些为意义重大、充满新意的好点子而努力工作的人，而不是那些围绕一些鸡毛蒜皮的小事大做文章的人。我们应当强调创新思想中“非显而易见”的要求。我们不应当给苹果公司带圆角的矩形平板授予专利；也不应当给推特公司下拉刷新反馈功能授予专利。 Patents also last too long. Protection for 20 years might make sense in the pharmaceutical industry, because to test a drug and bring it to market can take more than a decade. But in industries like information technology, the time from brain wave to production line, or line of code, is much shorter. When patents lag behind the pace of innovation, firms end up with monopolies on the building-blocks of an industry. Google, for instance, has a patent from 1998 on ranking websites in search results by the number of other sites linking to them. Here some additional complexity is inevitable: in fast-moving industries,governments should gradually reduce the length of patents. Even pharmaceutical firms could live with shorter patents if the regulatory regime allowed them to bring treatments to market sooner and for less upfront cost. 另外，专利持续的时间太长。20年的专利保护对于制药业来说也许有些道理，因为药物实验和把药物带入市场可能要花费十多年时间。但是，在信息技术这样的产业里，从大脑构想出点子到生产线或是代码行，时间就要短得多。当专利落后于创新的步伐，公司就会随着它们简单复制的专利走向终点。例如，谷歌公司有一个从1998年开始的专利，专利内容是各顶级网站搜索结果与其它网站链接数量。这其中一些附加的复杂性就不可避免：在快速移动的工业里，政府应该逐渐减少专利的时间长度。即便是对于制药公司而言，只要监管制度允许他们可以早一点把治疗方法带入市场并减少它们的预付成本，他们也可以适用于较短时期的专利。 Today’s patent regime operates in the name of progress. Instead, it sets innovation back. Time to fix it. 名义上，今天的转移体制运作是促进创新发展，但实际上却阻碍了创新。所以，是时候解决这个问题了。 |
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