Passage - General Questions

[Administrator]

Please post your questions below! Thank you!

[oli_oops]

Hello,

No really an LSAT specific question, rather a reading question:
English is not my first language, so I think when I checked the answer, I realized that I might have totally misunderstood this sentence : (line 51-54)

"...there has been a tradition among judges deciding patent cases to respect a completely noncommercial research exception to patent infringement."

I first understood it as: usually judges respect a completely noncommercial research, *except for* (when in situations involving) patent infringement.

I only know that I probably interpreted it totally the opposite way after I checked the answer. I'm still confused. If anyone can help break the sentence down and explain it to me how it should be interpreted correctly, that'd be great. This sentence was key to determine at least 2 questions.....and I got them wrong because of this...


thanks!
oli

[James Finch]

Hi Oli,

This is exactly the kind of complicated language that typifies LSAT legal passages (and legal writing in general). Even for native speakers, this dense writing can be tough to parse, especially within the 35 minute section time limit. It helps to understand each part of the sentence before trying to understand the meaning in total.

So starting with "there has been a tradition among judges deciding patent cases," we can say that a general rule in patent cases will be mentioned next in the sentence. There may be exceptions, but this will be how the majority of cases are decided, as it is a "tradition among judges."

Next, we are given what that general rule is: "to respect a completely noncommercial research exception to patent infringement." This is a little more difficult to parse, as the syntax is backwards with regard to the ideas being expressed. We first have to know the legal dispute is (whether a patent has been infringed or not), and then understand what relevant issue is being raised. That issue is that "completely noncommercial research" represents an "exception to patent infringement," meaning that you are legally allowed to infringe a patent if you are only engaged in noncommercial research (no selling derivative products or otherwise commercializing your research).

Here, a real-world hypothetical example helps to understand the meaning of the abstract rule we just learned. Let's say that a biochemist is working at a university and wants to use patented formulas for pharmaceuticals in his research. He is allowed to create those pharmaceuticals himself, which would otherwise be patent infringement, so long as he only engages in "noncommercial research," such as publishing a publicly available paper based on his findings. However, if he tries to commercialize his findings, then he may be held liable for patent infringement.

Hope this clears things up!