That ruling produced an explosion in business-method patent filings, initially by emerging Internet companies trying to stake out exclusive rights to specific types of online transactions.
该裁决导致了商业方法专利申请的激增，最初是由新兴的互联网公司申请的，这些公司试图为特定类型的在线交易确立排他性权利。
Later, more established companies raced to add such patents to their files, if only as a defensive move against rivals that might beat them to the punch.
后来，一些更为成熟的企业纷纷竞相将此类专利加入自己的文件中，即使只是为了防范竞争对手抢先一步。
Over the past decade, many companies had perfected the art of creating automatic behaviors – habits – among consumers.
在过去十年中，许多公司已经精通了在消费者中培养自动行为——习惯——的艺术。
These habits have helped companies earn billions of dollars when customers eat snacks or wipe counters almost without thinking, often in response to a carefully designed set of daily cues.
这些习惯帮助公司在顾客几乎不假思索地吃零食或擦拭台面时赚取了数十亿美元，而这些行为通常是对精心设计的一系列日常提示的反应。
The companies that dr. Curtis turned to – Procter & Gamble, Colgate- Palmolive and Unilever – had invested hundreds of millions of dollars finding the subtle cues in consumers’ lives that corporations could use to introduce new routines.
Curtis 博士所求助的公司——宝洁公司、高露洁-棕榄公司和联合利华公司——已经投入了数亿资金，寻找消费者生活中细微的提示，企业可以利用这些提示来引入新的日常习惯。
例句取自历年考研英语真题，翻译为机器生成，仅供学习参考。