第十二篇
Whose Bright Idea?
Companies are cracking down on pirates who steal designs, movies and computer programs. The battle is getting hotter — and more important.
(1) When Johnson & Johnson introduced a new fiber-glass casting tape for broken bones several years ago, executives at Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing flew into a rage. The tape, which sets fractures faster than plaster`, was remarkably similar in design and function to a casting tape developed by 3M scientists. The St. Paul-based company quickly sued, charging J&J with violating four of its patents. Last month a federal court backed 3M and ordered J&J to pay $116 million in damages and interest — the fourth largest pat-ent-infringement judgment in history.
(2) Although the verdict is subject to appeal, the award underscores the growing importance of protecting in-tellectual property. That phrase may seem entirely too grand to apply to a song like If You Don’t Want My Peaches, You’d Better Stop Shaking My Tree, but it actually embraces the whole vast range of creative ideas that turn out to have value — and many of them have more value than ever. From Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse to Upjohn’s formula for its antibaldness potion`, patents, trademarks and copyrights have become corporate treas-ures that their owners will do almost anything to protect.
(3) In an economy increasingly based on information and technology, ideas and creativity often embody most of a company’s wealth. That is why innovations are being patented, trademarked and copyrighted in record numbers. It is also why today’s clever thief doesn’t rob banks, many of which are broke anyway; he makes un-authorized copies of Kevin Costner’s latest film, sells ______ Cartier watches and steals the formula for Merck’s newest pharmaceutical`. That’s where the money is.
(4) The battle is widening — U.S. companies filed more than 5,700 intellectual-property lawsuits last year in contrast to 3,800 in 1980 — and the stakes can be enormous. In the biggest patent-infringement case to date, Eastman Kodak was ordered last October to pay $900 million for infringing on seven Polaroid in-stant-photography patents. In a $100 million trademark suit, Mirage Studios, creator of the hugely popular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles characters, is demanding that AT&T refrain from using such terms as turtle power and cowabunga in a 900-number telephone service for kids. In a far-reaching copyright case, book pub-lishers scored an important victory in March when a federal court in New York City fined the Kinko’s Graphics national chain of copying stores $510,000 for illegally photocopying and selling excerpts of books to college students.医学.全在线www.med126.com
(5) Yet thieves still reap a rich harvest. Inadequate protection of U.S. patents, trademarks and copyrights costs the U.S. economy $80 billion in sales lost to pirates and 250,000 jobs every year, according to Gary Hoffman, an intellectual-property attorney at Dickstein, Shapiro & Morin in Washington. The computer industry loses upwards of $4 billion of revenues a year to illegal copying of software programs. Piracy of movies, books and recordings costs the entertainment business at least $4 billion annually.
(6) With intellectual property now accounting for more than 25% of U.S. exports (compared with just 12% eight years ago), protection against international piracy ranks high on the Bush Administration’s trade agenda. The U.S. International Trade Commission, the federal agency that deals with unfair-trade complaints by Ameri-can companies, is handling a record number of cases (38 last year). Says ITC Chairman Anne Brunsdale: “Conceptual property has replaced produce and heavy machinery as the hotbed of global trade disputes.”
(7) One reason is that any countries offer only feeble protection to intellectual property. Realizing that such laxness will exclude them from much world trade as well as restrict native industries, nations everywhere are revising laws covering patents, copyrights and trade names. Malaysia, Egypt, China, Turkey, Brazil and even the Soviet Union have all recently announced plans either to enact new laws or reinforce existing safeguards. In an effort to win U.S. congressional support for a proposed free-trade pact, Mexico last month revealed plans to double the life of trademark licenses to 10 years and extend patent protection for the first time to such products as pharmaceuticals and food.
(8) Countries that don’t get with the program are asking for trouble. The Bush Administration in April placed India and Thailand on the commerce Department watch list for possible revenge because of those countries’ casual treatment of property rights. In Thailand, cited as the most notorious violator, copycat versions of Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet software sell for the equivalent of $50 instead of the $500 U.S. price. New movies like David Lynch’s Wild at Heart, not yet available on video in the U.S., go for $4 a tape.
(9) As intellectual property becomes more valuable and secure, people naturally create more of it. Evidence: filings for patents, trademarks and copyrights are hitting record highs. Last year some 174,700 patents were filed in the U.S., a 39% jump over 1985. The number of copyrights registered soared to 643,000 last year, in contrast to 401,000 in a five-year period ending in 1975. Overseas filings are also up. In Japan the number of patent applications nearly doubled between 1980 and 1988 as that government signaled its intention to enforce property laws more strictly. After a 29-year delay, Texas Instruments recently received a basic patent on inte-grated circuits in Japan that could bring the U.S. company an extra $500 million in annual revenues from Japa-nese chipmakers.
(10) Can intellectual-property protection be too rigourous? Maybe. The computer software industry, which thrives on the rapid exchange of ideas and continuous improvements, fears that vigorously enforced patents could chill innovation and stifle growth. Earlier this year, Hayes Microcomputer, the largest supplier of com-puter modems, won $11 million in damages from three Silicon Valley firms that copied Hayes’ software for sending and receiving data. The ruling alarmed programmers, who fear their own software could land them in court if it merely resembles someone else’s too closely. The industry also worries about the breadth of coverage. Can copyrights and patents be used to protect the display-screen appearance, the “look and feel” of software? Such questions are at the heart of Apple Computer’s intently watched copyright suit against Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard, which Apple says copied its Macintosh software.
(11) Time was when such fights over intellectual property were legal esoterica`. No longer. Get used to them because they are sure to command ever more attention. Says Lisa Raines, general counsel and director of the Industrial Biotechnology Association in Washington: “ A patent is the single most important item in the industry today. Without it, no company would invest or invent.” As global enterprise relies less on physical materials and more on human creativity, reliable protection of intellectual property will become central to world commerce.
