Patent protection in the drug field.

It is part of human nature and the quest for security to seek to amass material goods and to increase wealth. One of the characteristics of a well-ordered State is, therefore, a constitutional and legal basis for the protection of material property. Curiously enough in earlier centuries rights in the field of the intellectual property, such as inventions and works of art and literature, were not clearly defined. In the Middle Ages, and even some centuries later, because protection for inventions was lacking the inventor had to try to keep them secret in order to be able to utilize them industrially without unwarranted interference by others. One consequence of this situation was that, on account of the need for secrecy, large scale industrial production could not take place. Large scale production would inevitably have required the employment of large numbers of people and, under these conditions, the inventor would not have been able to keep his invention really secret. Patent Law first came into being as long ago as the year 1400 in Venice and developed as a result of the coming into force of the Statute of Monopolies in England in 1624. In the United States of America in 1789 the concept of the promotion of Science and Technology by the granting of patents was enshrined in the Constitution: 'The Congress shall have the power. . . to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries'. About one year later, on 10th April 1790, George Washington signed the first Patent Law of the United States, which laid down the pre-requisites for the obtention of patents and the protection conferred thereby. France followed and also included patent protection in its Constitution. In the 19th century most of the other European countries also passed laws for the protection of inventions by patents. This was the beginning of a new era in which there was no longer an anomalous distinction between rights concerning material property and rights concerning intellectual property. Works of literature and art were automatically protected on publication by the so-called copyright; protection for inventions was obtainable by special procedures involving application to the patent offices established by the governments. The considerations leading to the introduction of patent protection were not so much the protection of the inventor by assisting him to make commercial profits, but rather the promotion of progress and industrialization by research, invention and publication of all the details of inventions. It was no longer necessary for the inventor, in his own interests, to keep his inventions