Intellectual Property Rights as an International Public Good and the Frontiers of Patent Competition

1. 1998年，美国社会发生了两起令人印象深刻的专利事件。首先，在7月23日，CAFC在道富银行诉Signature金融集团案中裁定商业方法可以获得专利。其次，10月6日，Incyte制药公司获得了est专利。此后，专利申请量显著增加，特别是在商业方法和生物技术领域。商业方法和基因组信息都具有公共产品的性质，因此，随着应用热潮的兴起，一种“人类共同利益”与“知识私有化”之间的竞争加剧了。最近生物技术研究领域专利权的激增表明，“反公地悲剧”正在发生，人们对稀缺资源的利用不足。基因组信息的私营化——这些基础研究成果原本可以在公共领域免费提供——可能会导致上游基因组医学的基因专利森林，并对制药公司的获取施加限制。因此，下游产品开发将更加昂贵和缓慢。尽管美国专利商标局认为专利池可以有效地解决这一问题，但至少在基因组医学领域，专利池的有用性是非常值得怀疑的。自从道富银行的判决以来，bmp（尤其是电子商务专利）的数量急剧上升。近年来的专利泛滥带来了专利质量低、诉讼增多、累积创新滞后等问题。尽管美国专利商标局提高商业方法专利质量的举措已被证明是成功的，但一个根本问题仍未得到解决。商业方法专利目前阻碍而不是促进创新，这是美国专利法的主要目标。因此，制定具体的专利制度改革方案十分重要。

1. In 1998, the U.S. society experienced two impressive incidents on patens. First, on July 23rd, the CAFC ruled in the State Street Bank v. Signature Financial Group that business methods are patentable. Second, on October 6th, the Incyte Pharmaceutical Inc. was awarded patent on ESTs. Thereafter, significant increase in patent filings especially in the areas of business methods and biotechnology has occurred. Methods of doing business as well as genome information have the public-good qualities, so with the application boom a kind of rivalry between "common interests of mankind" and "privatization of knowledge" has become worse.2. The recent proliferation of patent rights in biotech research suggests "the tragedy of anticommons" in which people underuse scarce resources is occurring. Privatization of genome information-basic research results that formerly would have been made freely available in the public domain-may cause a forest of genetic patents of upstream genome medicine and put restrictions on access by pharmaceutical firms. As a result, downstream product development will be more expensive and slower. Although the USPTO asserts that patent pool is effective to solve the problem, the usefulness of patent pool is very doubtful at least in the sphere of genome medicine.3. There has been a dramatic rise in the number of BMPs (especially e-commerce patents) since the State Street decision. This recent patent flood has given rise to several problems such as low quality patents, increased litigation, and delay of cumulative innovation. Although the USPTO's initiative to improve the quality of business method patents has proved successful, a fundamental problem still remains unsolved. Business method patents currently retards rather than promote innovation which is the main goal of U.S. patent law. So it is important to formulate a concrete plan for reforming the patent system.