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Dreyfuss, Rochelle C. --- "Resolving Patent Disputes in a Global Economy" [2009] ELECD 257; in Takenka, Toshiko (ed), "Patent Law and Theory" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2009)

Book Title: Patent Law and Theory

Editor(s): Takenka, Toshiko

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845424138

Section: Chapter 22

Section Title: Resolving Patent Disputes in a Global Economy

Author(s): Dreyfuss, Rochelle C.

Number of pages: 33

Extract:

22 Resolving patent disputes in a global
economy
Rochelle C. Dreyfuss*



1 Introduction
As with other businesses, the patent industries have discovered the global
marketplace. In the last dozen years, patent applications filed in countries
other than the inventor's place of residence have increased annually by 7.4%
worldwide,1 and over the last two decades, licensing revenues in the OECD
states have grown ten-fold.2 To a large extent, these developments stem from
a dynamic familiar to other sectors of the economy: as countries grow wealth-
ier and more sophisticated, as tastes and preferences converge, as transporta-
tion costs decline, foreign goods become more familiar, attainable, desirable
and available. For the technology community, there are other factors that are
also at play. The inclusion of the TRIPS Agreement within the World Trade
Organization (WTO) framework means that patents are now readily available
in many nations and across a broad array of creative endeavors.3 Intellectual
production is becoming increasingly collaborative, involving inventors of
different nationalities, working in a multiplicity of locations.4 Technology


* Along with Jane C. Ginsburg and François Dessemontet, Rochelle C.
Dreyfuss is a Reporter for the American Law Institute's project on Intellectual
Property: Principles Governing Jurisdiction, Choice of Law, and Judgments in
Transnational Disputes. The author would like to acknowledge the financial support of
the Filomen D'Agostino and Max E. Greenberg Research Fund and the assistance of
Melissa Feeney Wasserman, NYU Class of 2007.
1 World Intellectual Property Organization (2006), `WIPO ...