WIPO moves towards "world" patent system

Paper taking a critical look at the "WIPO patent agenda" that GRAIN believes is the begining of a framework for a world patent system characterised as "an Orwellian mixture of dream (e.g. for global corporations, which get a “one-stop shop” to deal with) and nightmare (e.g. for local patent lawyers, who lose their jobs)".

The report identifies three main areas which it believes constitute WIPO's building blocks for this new world system:

• the Patent Law Treaty (PLT) which harmonises the formalities that patent offices undertake to administer patent applications
• the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) which provides a common facility to conduct international searches of prior art for patent applications.
• the ongoing negotiations over the Substantive Patent Law Treaty (SPLT) which attempts to harmonise the basic rules governing patents.

The authors outline what they see as the core controvesies surrounding the SPLT namely

• whether business methods are patentable
• whether to incorporate the provisions of TRIPS Articles 27.3 and 3 on exclusions from patentability
• whether the SPLTwill allow developing countries to secure financial benefit s from access to genetic resources as prescribed by the biodversity convention (CBD)

To conclude the paper argues that a world patent system would put an end to the use of patent law as a tool for development by developing countries and yet these countries have had very little say in negotiations up until now.