大学英语六级仔细阅读练习题(5)_大学英语阅读

大学英语六级仔细阅读练习题(5)

　　One strategy the investigators criticize is the use of the patent duster. A firm keen to defend its drug due to go off-patent may file dozens or hundreds of new patents, often of dubious merit, to confuse and terrify potential copycats and maintain its monopoly. An unnamed drugs firm once took out 1,300 patents across the EU on a single drug. The report also suggests that out-of-court settlements between makers of patented drags and generics firms may be a strategy used by the former to delay market entry by the latter.

　　According to EU officials, such misdeeds -have delayed the arrival of generic competition and the accompanying savings. On average, rite report estimates, generics arrived seven months after a patented drug lost its protection, though where the drug was a big seller the lag was four months. The report says taxpayers paid about q 3 billion more than they would have-had the generics gone on sale immediately.

　　But hang on a minute, Though many of the charges of bad behavior leveled at the patented-drugs industry by EU investigators may well be true, the report seems to let the generics industry off the hook too lightly. After all, if the drugs giants stand accused, in effect, of bribing opponents to delay the launch of cheap generics, shouldnt the companies that accepted those bribes also share the blame?