Patents: Overdue Reform

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The world's archaic maze of patent laws and procedures has long been a major nuisance to international-minded businessmen, who insist that it inhibits the global spread of patent benefits through new technology, new industry and expanded markets. Last week delegates from 22 major countries—including the U.S., Britain, France, West Germany, Japan and the Soviet Union, which account for 80% of the world's patent applications—reached preliminary agreement in Geneva on some overdue reforms.

To end the muddle the conferees approved the provisions of an international treaty that requires a separate application in every country where businessmen want to protect inventions from covetous competitors. That fragmentation saddles companies with onerous costs (as much as $40,000) of filing for patents in dozens of nations with differing requirements (and languages). It has also engulfed national patent offices in wasteful duplication of patent searches and paper work on about half of the world's 650,000 annual patent applications. As a result, it now takes the U.S. 21 years to issue a patent while Germany takes five and Japan seven.

End to Overlap. The Geneva accord would end all the costly overlap by establishing a single multilingual international patent application, to be filed with a system of worldwide patent clearing houses. The clearing houses would be set up by the body that drafted the treaty, the United International Bureau for the Protection of Intellectual Property, administrator of the Paris Convention of 1883, under which 79 nations agree to give equal treatment to one another's inventors. Individual nations would retain the right to grant or reject patents, but international patent centers would check the novelty of most inventions, issue recommendations to national patent offices. Under the plan, the international search centers would be established in the U.S., Germany, the U.S.S.R. and Japan to handle applications on a regional basis. Those from other areas would be processed by the Bureau's Hague headquarters.

The treaty must still be reduced to final form, approved again by the Geneva delegates, then submitted to all 79 Paris pact signatories for ratification. If all goes according to plan, predicts Director Georg Bodenhausen of the International Bureau, the new setup may be in force by 1970. Though some large corporations "view a novelty such as patent cooperation with due suspicion," he says, "I am absolutely certain they will be delighted once it gets off the ground."

The U.S.'s National Association of Manufacturers is already cheering. "We were afraid that this scheme would sell us down the river," says Vice President Reynold Bennett. "But the treaty looks all right." Though the pact stops short of creating an international patent, it is a step in that direction. And for U.S. inventors who file nearly 100,000 patent applications a year in Washington, it promises some fast benefits. Without its load of foreign applications, the U.S. Patent Office figures it can cut its search time to 18 months.