Procuring Promising Provisions: the British Patent System and the Navy Proviso, 1794–1831

BackgroundRecently, interest in compulsory licensing of pharmaceuticals has been growing regardless of a country’s income- level. We aim to investigate the use of compulsory licensing as a legitimate part of the patent system and tool for the government to utilize by demonstrating that countries with a mature patent system were more likely to utilize compulsory licensing of pharmaceuticals.MethodsWe used a multivariate logistic model to regress attempts to issue compulsory licensing on the characteristics of the intellectual property system, controlling for macro context variables and other explanatory variables at a country level.ResultsA total 139 countries, selected from members of the World Trade Organization, were divided into a CL-attempted group (N = 24) and a non-CL-attempted group (N = 115). An attempt to issue compulsory licensing was associated with population (+) and a dummy variable for other regions, including Europe and North America (−). After controlling for macro context variables, mature intellectual property system was positively associated with attempting compulsory licensing.ConclusionsOur study provided evidence of an association between attempting compulsory licensing and matured patent systems. This finding contradicts our current understanding of compulsory licensing, such as compulsory licensing as a measure to usurp traditional patent systems and sometimes diametrically opposed to the patent system. The findings also suggest a new role of compulsory licensing in current patent systems: compulsory licensing could be a potential alternative or complement to achieve access to medicines in health systems through manufacturing and exporting patented pharmaceuticals.

The industrial revolution marks the genesis of modern economic growth; the transition from a universal regime of Malthusian constraint to an era of rapid economic expansion. Despite its importance, however, the causes of the industrial revolution remain poorly understood. By radically expanding the evidential base between 1700 and 1852, this thesis provides a fundamental reassessment of the contribution of patenting to British industrialisation. The fu·st half of the thesis analyses the institutional aspects of patenting. The first research chapter examines the administration of the patent system. In 1700, it was difficult for an inventor to navigate the protracted, expensive and politicised petition procedure necessary to obtain a patent. However, with developments in the legal construction of the patent, and the appearance of patent agents in the 1770s, patent protection became significantly easier to obtain. The second research chapter shows that patents were well protected in law and readily enforceable through injunctions. The first half of the thesis reaches a favourable assessment of the institutional efficacy of the patent system. This makes it plausible to argue that the patent system actively encouraged inventive activity during the industrial revolution. This possibility is explored in the last three chapters. The third research chapter argues that by obliging inventors to eschew secret working and set down written descriptions of their inventions, patents facilitated the codification and diffusion of industrial technology. The foUith research chapter demonstrates that inventors and manufacturers could obtain large returns from working patented inventions. Howeverh arguing that the returns appropriable with a patent encouraged the development of technology assumes that patentees were responsive to economic/commercial stimuli. This hypothesis is supported with a comparative analysis of the English, Scottish and Irish patent indices in the final chapter. The second half of the thesis concludes that the patent system was an important contributory factor to technological development during British industrialisation.

Compulsory License (CL) under the Patent system is an involuntary contract between a willing buyer and an unwilling seller imposed and enforced by the State. The WTO states that compulsory licensing is when a government allows someone else to produce the patented product or process without the consent of the patent owner. It is one of the flexibilities on patent protection included in the WTO’s agreement on intellectual property — the TRIPS. The current system of compulsory licensing for patents in India, contained in Chapter XVI of the Patents Act, 1970 (S.82 to S.94) was introduced by the Patents (Amendment) Act of 2002, slightly amended by the Patents (Amendment) Act of 2005, and was designed to be TRIPS-compliant. The 2005 amendment is of predominance since it introduced the product patent regime for pharmaceuticals for the first time in India and consequently increased the patent scope with concerns of compulsory licensing assuming greater significance. The compulsory licensing provisions under the Indian Patent regime, until now, have largely been a subject of legal and academic debates, open to numerous interpretations owing to the non-grant of a single compulsory license for a pharmaceutical product despite several attempts thereof.The recent 2012 judgment of NATCO Pharma Ltd. v. Bayer Corporation by the Controller of Patents, Mumbai is one of the first of its kind in the history of Patents Act, 1970, wherein the provisions of Section 84 have been invoked by the Applicant for seeking the grant of a compulsory license. It has laid down the very foundation stone of the jurisprudence of compulsory licensing in patents with respect to pharmaceutical products in India and has principally clarified the legislative intent behind various key provisions governing compulsory licensing under the Indian Patents Act, 1970 read together with the TRIPs Agreement providing guidance to any further construal in this direction.The objective of this paper is to examine the compliance of the Nexaver compulsory license grant with the TRIPS requirements and in view of the same to assess the consistency of the Indian compulsory licensing regime with the TRIPs obligations.

THE British patent system is a matter which concerns all workers in applied science, for it represents an attempt-faulty and incomplete, but still an attempt-to secure for such workers the credit for their achievements, together with a share of the material advantages arising from these. Hence any event which seriously affects the future of the patent system is one to which the scientific world should give careful consideration, and such an event is just beginning to appear on the horizon. Lest it should take shape before its implications have been seriously canvassed, it may be well to direct attention to some of its aspects. There is a rule which requires Government servants to submit to superannuation at an age when many men are still capable of their best work, and since the rule appears to be inexorably applied, the retirement of the present Comptroller of the Patent Office and the appointment of his successor must be regarded as inevitable in the not very distant future. It is perhaps a little early to discuss this question, but not too early; for when the first official intimation of such a change is given, the selection of the successor may be actually, if not formally, a fait accompli.

The British Patent System during the Industrial Revolution 1700–1852 presents a fundamental reassessment of the contribution of patenting to British industrialisation during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It shows that despite the absence of legislative reform, the British patent system was continually evolving and responding to the needs of an industrialising economy. Inventors were able to obtain and enforce patent rights with relative ease. This placed Britain in an exceptional position. Until other countries began to enact patent laws in the 1790s, it was the only country where inventors were frequently able to appropriate returns from obtaining intellectual property rights, thus encouraging them to develop the new technology industrialisation required.

The patent legal system in Iraq: The path to efficiency of its statutes

British Journal of Clinical PharmacologyVolume 22, Issue S1 p. 9S-14S Free Access Drug research and development in the pharmaceutical industry. BW Cromie, BW CromieSearch for more papers by this author BW Cromie, BW CromieSearch for more papers by this author First published: February 1986 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2125.1986.tb02975.xCitations: 1AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat References Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (1984). UK pharmaceutical R&D expenditure ABPI Annual Report 1983–84. London: ABPI. Cromie, B. W. (1979). Present problems: the effect of British regulations. Medicine for the year 2000, eds G. Teeling-Smith & N. Wells London: Office of Health Economics. Grabowski, H. (1982). Public policy and innovation: the case of pharmaceuticals. Technovation, 1, 157– 189. HMSO (1970). The British Patent System. Report of the Committee to Examine the Patent System and Patent Law Chairman M. A. L. Banks. Cmnd. 4407 (July), 119. London: HMSO. HMSO (1983a). Scientific procedures on living animals. Cmnd 8883, (May). London: HMSO. HMSO (1983b) Intellectual Property Rights and Innovation. Cmnd. 9117, (December), 45. London: HMSO. I. M. S. Pharmaceutical Market letter (1984). Drug industry from investors' eyes. I.M.S. Pharmaceutical Marketletter, 2, 11. Lawrence, W. W. (1983). Improved science, heightened societal aspirations and the agenda for ‘risk’ decision-making. In Risk in society, ed A. J. Jouhar London: John Libbey. Office of Health Economics (1983). Worldwide introduction of N.C.E.s 1961–1980. Pharmaceutical Innovation: recent trends, future prospects. London: OHE. Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (1983). Lost patent life, lost medicines and the rising cost of health care. Washington D.C.: Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association. RSPCA (1984a). Notes on the Work of the RSPCA Animal Experimentation Research Department. March 1984. RSPCA (1984b) Animal experimentation RSPCA booklet, Horsham (undated but sent out August 1984). Scrip (1984). ‘Rocky road’ seen for innovators. Scrip, 925, 13. Walker, S. A. & Prentis, R. A. (1984). Drug research and pharmaceutical patents. Pharm. J., 234, 11– 13. Citing Literature Volume22, IssueS1February 1986Pages 9S-14S ReferencesRelatedInformation

The patent system is built on the premise that patents provide an incentive for innovation by offering a limited monopoly to patentees. The inverse assumption that removing patent protection will hurt innovation has largely prevented the widespread use of compulsory licensing-the practice of allowing third parties to use patented inventions without patentee permission. In this Article, I empirically test this assumption. I compare rates of patenting and other measures of inventive activity before and after six compulsory licenses over drug patents issued in the 1980s and 1990s. As reported below, I observe no uniform decline in innovation by companies affected by compulsory licenses and find very little evidence of a negative impact, which is consistent with earlier empirical work. While anecdotal, these findings suggest that the assertion that licensing categorically harms innovation is probably wrong. Based on the data, I comment on the use of compulsory licensing to reduce the price of AIDS and other drugs for developing countries. I suggest that, based on past experience, compulsory licenses need not result in a decline in innovation and that this policy option for increasing access to medicines deserves greater exploration.

We live in a knowledge economy. The production and dissemination of knowledge will be central to solving the problems of climate change and environmental sustainability, reducing global poverty and addressing other global problems. This article asks: do intellectual property rights – with their increasingly global reach –further or hinder the production and dissemination of knowledge? Experience with genetically modified organisms shows that a model markedly different from the current one is more likely to bring wider social benefits, both in the short and the long run. Indeed, the current system may impede both innovation and dissemination. There are reforms in the intellectual property regime, and more broadly in the way we finance, organize and incentivize innovation, that would increase the pace of innovation and its utilization. The spread of the current dysfunctional system owes much to the evolution of intellectual property rights in the US – and the influence of particular special interests there.Policy Implications A well‐functioning patent system requires careful attention to a number of details, including: (1) what can be patented; (2) the breadth of a patent; and (3) the standards of novelty that determine whether an innovation is eligible for a patent. Corporate interests have resulted in a patent system which answers each of these questions in a way that may impede not only the utilization of knowledge, but even innovation. Among the details that matter is the process by which patents are granted. The current system grants too many ‘bad’ patents. Opening the process of examination of patent candidates to all parties that reveal themselves as having private information relevant to a thorough examination (in a process called opposition) should reduce the number of ‘bad’ patents. The patent system is only one part of a society’s innovation system, through which the production of knowledge is financed, incentivized and organized. Too much attention has been focused on IPR (intellectual property rights), and too little on alternatives, e.g. open source systems, publicly financed innovation and prizes. Providing more scope for compulsory licenses – making it easier for countries to issue them – would reduce some of the inefficiencies associated with the current patent system.

The contribution of this paper is to prepare and provide empirical evidence for the findings by Henkel and Jell (2009) on behavioral patterns and the corresponding motives of inventors during the patenting process at the German Patent and Trademark Office (GPTO).Based on the conservative literature the patenting system has two main objectives – incentive to innovate and diffusion of knowledge (Kaufer 2002). Innovators need to be incentivized in order to innovate. Therefore, innovators should profit from inventing and innovating. Under this directive they should be able to receive a certain amount of value the invention is able to generate. Thus, the patent system is one mechanism to assure these rents referring to the objective “incentive to innovate”. In contrast, the patenting system could have negative impacts, since the invention is published with the patent (“diffusion of knowledge”) which might enable competitors to imitate or invent around the original invention (Horstmann, et al. 1985) (Johnson and Popp 2003) (Anton and Yao 2004). Nevertheless, the patent system might be a valuable candidate for inventors to appropriate rents for the following reason. The incentivizing objective is supposed to be achieved by granting the inventor an exclusion right which excludes potential competitors from using the invention. Such an exclusion right is often stated as precondition to incentivize an inventor to innovate (Arrow 1962). In reality, the importance of excludability achieved by a patent is uniformly found to be less effective compared to aspects like lead time advantages and complementary assets (Teece 1986). (Levin, et al. 1987) (Harabi 1995) (Cohen, et al. 2000) (Arundel 2001) (Kaufer 2002) (Sattler 2003).Nevertheless, the number of patents and patent applications increases and scientist try to explain why companies still patent en masse. They found and analyzed certain “strategic” aspects of patents and patent applications that expand the conventional objectives of a patent. (Kash and Kingston 2001) (Granstrand 2001) (Arundel and Pattel 2003) (Macdonald 2004) (Blind, et al. 2006) (Blind, et al. 2009).These strategic motives can be summarized as “Blocking competitors”, “Enabling cross-licensing” and “Forearming against infringement suits”. (Cohen, et al. 2000)

The Joint Iron Council, 1945–1966: The Origins and History of the Council and Its Constituents, the Council of Iron Producers and the Council of Ironfoundry Associations. By Basil H. Tripp. London: Published by George Allen and Unwin, Ltd.; Humanities Press, New York, distributor, 1966. Pp. 138. 10.50. - Volume 29 Issue 2

The British Patent System. I. Administration. By Klaus Boehm, in collaboration with Aubrey Silberston. [Cambridge: at the University Press. 1967. x, 180 and (index) 4 pp. 55s. net.] - Volume 27 Issue 1

This paper surveys the American and British patent systems in the period prior to the latter’s reform in 1852 and coinciding with the period of the first industrial revolution. It has been suggested that the British system’s archaic application procedure, extortionately high fees and hostile courts were indicative of an oligarchic socio-political system that purposively sought to restrict access to patent protection, as was apparently typical across Europe. Conversely, the American system was an open and democratic one, intended to provide patent protection to as many sections of society as possible. This paper argues for a less stylized comparison. British courts were not so hostile to patents (and patentees) as has been commonly supposed. Neither was it so difficult to obtain patent protection: for all its faults, the evidence that the British patent system was designed to restrict access to its provisions is nugatory. Consequently, explanations for America’s technological catch-up and eventual supplantation of Britain and Europe as global technological leader cannot invoke ‘superior’ patent institutions as a contributory factor.

MR. MEINHARDT'S book deals concisely with the history, practice, and possible developments of the British patent system in relation to the social and economic conditions of Britain, and may be read with advantage by anyone who desires knowledge and understanding of the subject. It appears at an opportune moment, because the British patent system has been recently under heavy fire, and will probably soon be the subject of legislation. Inventions, Patents and Monopoly. By Peter Meinhardt. Pp. xvi + 352. (London: Stevens and Sons, Ltd., 1946.) 25s. net.

Many countries use the offshore wind power technology as renewable energy for sustainable development. In this study, we will focus on the knowledge dissemination of the offshore wind power technology. Not every country has the ability to develop their own offshore wind power technologies. The knowledge dissemination on sustainable technology could bridge the technology gap among the developer and promote the development of sustainable clean energy technology. Some objective evaluation indicators of knowledge dissemination will be carried out in this research and help to find appropriate companies to assist the local industry on offshore wind power industry. The public patent information is used to build a model to bring evaluation indicators about knowledge dissemination. These evaluation indicators include the revealed symmetric technological advantage index (RSTA), the knowledge density index ( <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">D_c,m,t</i> ), and the relatedness knowledge base index ( <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">R_c,r,t</i> ). For RSTA, <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">D</i> and <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">R</i> indicators, Siemens Aktiengesellschaft, Vestas Wind Systems, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, and Aloys Wobben have higher values, which can be evaluated to have the higher degree of knowledge dissemination in the field of offshore wind power technology. Unlike previous studies that only using patent bibliographic data alone, employ evaluation indicators can extract more information about the knowledge dissemination. This study presents a promising method to evaluate the degree of knowledge dissemination in offshore wind power technology by using patent data.