We don’t actually at the moment have a ‘world patent’. You must apply for a patent (and have your patent examined, then granted) in every country where you want protection. TRIPS (the WTO IP treaty) does oblige all countries to treat all nationalities equally, and we have a Patent Cooperation Treaty which allows for streamlined application (you apply in one place, and your application gets sent to, and examined by, every office where you’ve applied for protection, provided the country is a PCT signatory country).

One reason we haven’t moved to worldwide patent protection is that countries have different standards of what can be patented (as you might know: the US is more generous with software and business method patents than, say, Europe). So at the moment, you might apply for a patent in 15 countries, but have it granted in different forms or not granted in some of those jurisdictions. Hope that explains.

Interesting problem indeed. It seems that the “marketisation” of patent services won’t really solve any of the problems of the current services. There will still be time/thoroughness balances to strike with the added pressure of growing the “customer base”.

Isn’t there already a treaty where patents taken in signatory countries already ensure patent protection in most of the world? The “one patent” ideal was with us today I thought.