세계특허통일화 과정에서 지역간ㆍ양자간 특허협력의 의미

The Implication of Regional and Bilateral Patent Cooperation in the Process of World Patent Harmonization

The idea of obtaining the same patent right for one invention worldwide was firstly conceived in Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property(Paris Convention) in 1883, and the practical measure on procedural harmonization was taken with the sign of Patent Cooperation Treaty(PCT) in 1970. The multilateral approach to world patent harmonization has been specified in the consultation on PCT reform and Substantive Patent Law Treaty(SPLT) within World Intellectual Property Organization(WIPO) since 2000. Recently the regional and bilateral patent cooperation among United States Patent and Trademark Office(USPTO), Japan Patent Office(JPO), and European Patent Office(EPO) has been intensified. For example, the trilateral cooperation, which was embarked on to reduce the informationization cost in 1983, has been developed focusing on the exchange of database, search method, and examiners, to build up confidence on the search and examination results. And USPTO and JPO also initiated a joint pilot project for the practical exploitation of search and examination results in 2003, which was evaluated to be effective in reducing examination workload. In this context, this study throws a question on why the multilateral discussion on world patent harmonization has recently been heated up, and on why the regional and bilateral patent cooperation among developed countries such as US, Japan, and Europe, has ever been enhanced beyond the multilateral level. In order to answer it, this paper explains the brief history of multilateral patent cooperation, the background of and the movement towards world patent harmonization within WIPO. And it also investigates and analyzes the recent aspects of regional and bilateral patent cooperation, and its implication in the process of world patent harmonization.