A Positive Agenda for Patent Reform and Harmonisation for Development

In his paper to accompany this session of the dialogue, Carlos Correa provides an extremely useful summary of the history of international patent harmonization. He also goes into some detail on various aspects of patent law likely to figure in any future debate. It is therefore not necessary for me to dwell on these issues in this paper other than perhaps to provide “evidence in reply” in certain instances. Instead I shall seek to supplement Carlos’ paper by providing a broader developed country perspective on the various issues. I shall endeavour also to illustrate how the position of developed countries towards patent harmonization has evolved and also to assess the impact of that on the current discussions on this issue particularly in WIPO.