| 抄録 |
Substantive Patent Law Treaty (SPLT) is an international treaty that have been discussed by the Standing Committee on the Law of Patents (SCP) of WIPO in order to facilitate international harmonization of the issues concerning substantive patentability requirements which differ from coun-try to country, following the adoption of the Patent Law Treaty (PLT) in June 2000 stipulating the har-monization of the formality and procedural requirements. The object of the SPLT is to achieve so-called “narrow harmonization” and “deep harmonization”, pursuing higher predictability of patent grant and the reduction of application costs on the applicant side, and the reduction of examination workload on the patent office side. In May 2003, the SCP halted its activities for one year due to the issues concerning the North-South harmonization of patent systems and others, the details of which will be separately reported. The purpose of this article is to summarize the history of discussions made in the past and the present situation, and then the problems to be challenged in the future, as a reference for responses taken in the meantime until the SCP activities are resumed or for responses taken to deal with the issues concerning the global patent. |
