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Is strong patent system good for India?

A Stroll Through Patent History

Petra Moser, now an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management, — in the form of a Ph.D. thesis — and has come up with some surprising conclusions that are attracting the attention of fellow scholars.

One of Professor Moser's conclusions is that developing countries like India, which is scheduled to come into full compliance with an international patent treaty in 2005, may be better off without strong patent laws.

The purpose of patents is twofold: to protect the inventor and to speed technological progress. Thus, patent laws require that an inventor, in a quid pro quo exchange for the limited monopoly that a patent provides, disclose his methods to others. "Countries without patent laws have much larger shares of their innovations where patenting would have been a bad idea," Professor Moser said.

So what is the lesson for Brazil, China, India and other countries that are being pressed by industrialized nations to create strong patent systems?

"We try to force patent laws on developing countries and say, This is best for you," she said. "Then we are surprised when they say they don't want patent laws. But they have a point. Such laws could actually hinder innovation in those countries."