The Trilateral and the upsurge of the Patent Prosecution Highway:

New model towards a world patent?

Abstract

Until the entry into force of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS), different regimes coexisted in different countries, resulting in a reasonable degree of asymmetry of rights, especially in the field of pharmaceutical patents. After TRIPS, the world changed and paved the way for new patent harmonization initiatives, mainly through the so-called Trilateral countries (Europe, United States and Japan), inaugurating a movement of “shared hegemony”. It is in this context that the so-called Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) arises, a type of priority procedure resulting from a project called cooperation for the reuse of search and examination reports from one patent office by another. The question that arises in the article is: to what extent does the PPH constitute a model for a worldwide patent? From a critical historical method, this article works with the hypothesis that the PPH, in itself, does not constitute a world patent, but that it is considered by different entities within the international patent system as a step towards this end. Four main arguments are presented. The article concludes that one of the reasons for avoiding the adoption or not of the PPH, the distrust of patent offices has gradually fallen and that the PPH can be considered a slow but steady step in a process that moves towards a scenario of concentration of patentability decisions in a few patent offices.