[工程科技]Harmony and Diversity in Global Patent Law.pdfVIP

College of William Mary Law School Scholarship Repository Faculty Publications Faculty Scholarship 2002 Harmony and Diversity in Global Patent Law John F. Duffy Repository Citation Duffy, John F., Harmony and Diversity in Global Patent Law (2002). Faculty Publications. Paper 849. /facpubs/849 Copyright c 2002 by the authors. This article is brought to you by the William Mary Law School Scholarship Repository. /facpubs HARMONY AND DIVERSITY IN GLOBAL PATENT LAw By John F. Dtiff/ ABSTRACT The second half of the twentieth century saw the rise of a broad movement to harmonize patent laws across nation-states. The most re- cent, and most significant, manifestation of this movement is the 1994 TRIPS Agreement, which requires signatory nations to adopt uniform rules on many major issues of patent law. The TRIPS Agreement has now been implemented by well over one hundred countries, including almost all major industrial nations, and it heralds a new level of interna- tional uniformity in patent law. This Article, while acknowledging the value of some harmonization of national law, explores the possible costs of the harmonization move- ment. Patent law itself owes its very birth not to harmony but to diversity of national law. The fifteenth-century Venetian patent statute was an ex- periment in law and a departure from the classical hostility to monopoly. Throughout the history of patent law, individual nations have varied their law and practice, and the results of these experiments have strengthened and improved patent practice. Diversity and experimentation continue