The Patent System and the Transfer of Technology to Less-Developed Countries

As concern has grown in recent years with the transfer of technology1 as a prime mover in promoting the economic development of the less-developed countries (LDCs), attention has focused increasingly on the institutions and channels which govern this transfer. The international patent system has, therefore, come under careful scrutiny, and its role at the centre of the legal structure within which a large proportion of technological transfers are effected has been severely criticised. Thus, several authors, such as Greer (1973), O’Brien (1974), Penrose (1973) and Vaitsos (1972), have analysed the implications of the patent system in the particular context of LDCs, and have arrived at conclusions ranging from the agnostic to the highly unfavourable. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development has entered the fray, after an earlier UN Study (1964), with a strong bid to reassess and reform the international structure of the patent system as embodied in the Paris Convention (UNCTAD (1974) and Patel 1974)). And all this activity has accompanied several sober evaluations of the workings of the patent system in the developed world (Sherer (1971), Firestone (1972), and Taylor and Silberston (1973)).2