We have travelled a long way since 1421 when the 'first known grant' of a patent by a State to an inventor was made in the Republic of Florence. The idea of patent gradually spread across different countries of the world, so that today there are hardly any countries without a patent law. However, there has been a great metamorphosis in the concept of patent and patent, which was looked upon as a monopoly and hence as an evil but was tolerated in the hope that a patent regime will help in industrial development of the State and lead to dissemination of scientific and technological information in society, has now taken on the char-acter of an instrument of domination by the industries of the highly industrialised countries led by USA.
A strong patent regime can have some justification only after a country has attained a high level of scientific and technological development and industrialisation, as the history of development of patent law in industrialised countries has shown. But the pity is that such a strong regime has been sought to be imposed on the developing countries. An occurrence of the greatest significance took place in 1980, when in USA patent was allowed for lifeform (genetically engineered microorganism). The ethics of allowing patent for any lifeform has since been the subject of an intense debate, while in the same country by 1988 a genetically engineered mouse has been allowed patent and the possibility of allowing patent of progressively higher life-forms genetically engineered (culminating in genetically engineered man?) becomes more and more real. All this has to be considered in the light of the fact that the very rationale of patent, namely, industrial developments, has remained only an assumption or an assertion and whatever data are available by and large disprove such a position.
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