La brevetabilité dans les récents traités de libre-échange américains

Abstract

INTERNATIONAL PATENT REGIME IN RECENT FREE TRADE US INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) of the World Trade Organization (WTO) is no longer the « new frontier » of the international patent regime. Indeed, the United States and other developed countries negotiate bilateral « TRIPs-plus » treaties with developing countries. Arguably, bilateralism allows to bypass the dead-end debates at the TRIPs Council and to build alliances for upcoming multilateral negotiations at the World Intellectual Property Organization. This article compares patentability provisions of the recentlyconcluded U.S. Free Trade Agreements with the TRIPs Agreement. Although most of the provisions of the TRIPs Agreement are integrated in bilateral treaties, we identify five significant changes : 1) bilateral treaties provide a 12 months grace period to inventors ; 2) the industrial application requirement is defined has a « specific, substantial, and credible utility » ; 3) a ceiling to the disclosure requirement is introduced ; 4) the plant protection regime is reinforced ; 5) the non-discrimination rule is omitted. Our comparative analysis shows that bilateralism allows the US to consolidate existing multilateral treaties, such as the TRIPs Agreement and the UPOV Convention, and to fortify its negotiating position for future multilateral treaties, such as the WIPO Substantive Patent Law Treaty. The new features of bilateral treaties indicate that the international patent regime is still oriented through the US patent law model.