The system of patent-granting, which confers temporary monopolies for the exploitation of new technologies, was originally established as an incentive to the pursuit of risky new ideas. Yet studies of the most patent-conscious business of all-the semi-conductor industry-suggest that firms do not necessarily become more innovative as they increase their patenting activity. Ziedonis and Hall, for example, found that investment in research and development (a reasonable proxy for innovation) did not substantially increase between 1982 and 1992, the industry's most feverish period of patenting. Instead, semiconductor firms simply squeezed more patents out of existing research and development expenditures. Moreover, Ziedonis and Hall found that as patenting activity at semiconductor firms increased in the 1980's, the consensus among industry employees was that the average quality of their firms' patents declined. Though patent quality is a difficult notion to measure, the number of times a patent is cited in the technical literature is a reasonable yardstick, and citations per semiconductor patent did decline during the 1980's. This decline in quality may be related to changes in the way semi-conductor firms managed their patenting process: rather than patenting to win exclusive rights to a valuable new technology, patents were filed more for strategic purposes, to be used as bargaining chips to ward off infringement suites or as a means to block competitors' products.
Which of the following, if true, would most clearly serve to weaken the author's claim about what constitutes a reasonable yardstick for measuring patent quality?
weaken削弱题 author’s claim about what constitutes a reasonable yardstick 定位到 Though patent quality is a difficult notion to measure,...did decline during the 1980’s. 意思是虽然patent的质量是个比较难去鉴定的东西，但是一个专利被technical literature引用到的次数是个合理的衡量方法，并且每个semiconductor patent被引用到的在1980‘s期间确实下降了，意味着这段时间他们的专利质量不行。 选项A more difficult to have an article accepted than most other industries整篇文章就是在以 semiconductor这个most patent-conscious business of all行业为例的，在比较的是在段时间内改行业之内的 引用量的一个对比 ，和其他行业没有关系 选项B 只是一个事实，highest-quality semiconductor patents are cited numerous times 高质量的专利被引用了很多次，起不到去削弱 引用的数量多少作为衡量专利质量的标准 选项C 对 technical literature不熟悉的人难以去识别专利组成，跟这个 literature引用还是没引用没关系 选项D 之内说明1970的质量比1980年好，起不到 去削弱 引用的数量多少作为衡量专利质量的标准 选项E 正确
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