Law Commons^™

The Harmonization Myth In International Intellectual Property Law, Sarah R. Wasserman Rajec

Faculty Publications

There is a dominant narrative in international intellectual property ("IP") law of ever-increasing harmonization. This narrative has been deployed in ways descriptive, prescriptive, and instrumental: approximating the historical trend, providing justification, and establishing the path forward. Appeals to harmonization are attractive. They evoke a worldwide partnership and shared sacrifice to meet the goals of innovation and access to technology through certainty, efficiency, and increased competition through lowered trade barriers. Countries with strong IP protections consistently and successfully tout the importance of certainty and lower trade barriers when seeking new and stronger protections from countries with lower levels of protection. Yet …

Evaluating Flexibility In International Patent Law, Sarah R. Wasserman Rajec

Faculty Publications

Global patent law has raced toward harmonization over the past decades. Countries with vastly different industries, values, and levels of development now offer robust patent rights with similar contours through membership in the World Trade Organization and consequent adoption of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (“TRIPS”). However, patent law is still far from harmonized among countries or static within countries. Jurisdictions tailor their patent laws to accommodate differences between industries, unforeseen inefficiencies, and diverse views of the costs and benefits associated with offering patent rights to stimulate innovation. Prior scholarly work consists of either doctrinal analyses …

Harmony And Diversity In Global Patent Law, John F. Duffy

Faculty Publications

The second half of the twentieth century saw the rise of a broad movement to harmonize patent laws across nation-states. The most recent, 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 international uniformity in patent law.

This Article, while acknowledging the value of some harmonization of national law , explores the possible costs of the …