International Patent-Legislation and Developing Countries

THE INTERNATIONAL PATENT-LEGISLATION AND DEVELOPING COUNTRIES A major concern today in many fields of international cooperation is the development of the nonindustrialized part of the world. This was not always so. Until fairly recently contacts among States were basi- cally limited to diplomatic intercourse. The concept of State sovereign- ty naturally led to the application of the principle of legal reciprocity between States. In the few areas outside diplomatic relations where international cooperation developed during the last century the same principle of legal reciprocity was applied. The cooperation that did take place was mostly among a limited number of Western States. In case countries outside this group wished to participate they were free to do so on accepting the traditional standards for such cooperation. Though a few countries, which today would have been or are known as develop- ing countries, did join in various schemes of international cooperation, the majority of them remained outside. Moreover, a large number of States, which today are known as developing, did not exist as sovereign States at the time. One of the areas in which a system of international cooperation was set up in the latter part of the nineteenth century was that of patent protection.