Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice Advance Access originally published online on September 18, 2009
Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice 2009 4(11):809-814; doi:10.1093/jiplp/jpp155
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© The Authors (2009). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
Transparency, trust, and the patent system
Legal context and key points: Knowledge, its generation, appropriation, and control, is at the heart of the modern knowledge economies—and IP rights (in particular, patents) that protect this knowledge can be described as their currency. It is therefore unsurprising that issues around knowledge and its ownership have become contested by an increasing number of actors, as the stakes are very high. As the role of the patent system has become more visible, it has been subject to increasing scrutiny not only by societal groups but also by the users of the system. Detractors often criticize the patent system for its perceived lack of openness or transparency, yet the very word patent is derived from the Latin word for open.
Practical significance: The health of the patent system is of critical importance to many stakeholders. This article discusses how the different definitions of openness—open v secret, or open v proprietary—might provide some useful thinking on how to restore this sense of inherent openness to the current system. The authors contend that the issue of openness is often a surrogate for societal concerns about trust in the patent system and its institutions. They suggest three questions that the system should address in order to regain public trust and argue that the issues of transparency and trust should be at the heart of any initiatives to reform the patent system and protect its threatened virtue.
Correspondence: * Scenarios Analyst and Consultant/Project Manager of the EPO Scenarios for the Future Project. Both authors here express strictly their personal views. Email: shirin{at}shirinelahi.com.