Patent, Patenting and business

Patents are the concept which was originated to protect the investment made to make inventive, novel and not known technical development for benefiting people and/or society. This is an agreement between government and inventor (Or assignee) to grant exclusive rights for bring developed, novel benefiting innovation to people and to protect your money investment made to make such innovation. The granted rights are like physical property, could be sold to anyone. This patent right is valid to limited time duration (Normally 20 years). Patents enhance industrial growth by protecting huge money involved in research and development.

Patents and their governing laws are very different from country to country, since each country has their own way of interpreting and also depends countries' industrial growth and requirement. Before 2005, India have not had granted product patent for pharmaceutical/agrochemical innovations, to protect India's generic industry.

In the name of globalization, to protect foreign investments and exploring new markets, many international agreements and co-operations, were established

1) Paris conventions

2)Patent cooperation treaty (by WIPO; UN)

3) TRIPS (by WTO; UN)

4) Regional treaty like

European patent convention (EPC), Eurasian patent organization (EAPO), The cooperation council for the arab states of the Gulf (GCC), African regional intellectual property organization (ARIPO), African intellectual property organization (OAPI).

TRIPS agreement is major break through to bring minimum standards in countries' patent/IP and related laws to enhance international business activities in unexplored big markets like many asian countries, africa, latin america and like.

New Developments are

1) patent prosecution highway (PPH) cooperation between large volume patent offices to prevent repeated work

2) Community patent for European union (enhanced version for EPC)

3) IP5 (joined project by major 5 IP offices)

Disclaimer:

there may be some errors since these are my personal views on patent and related law