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영어

The Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property was concluded in 1883 and is the first treaty for the international intellectual property system as we know it today. Under the Paris Convention, the inventor who wanted to obtain a world wide protection, or at least protection in a significant number of territories, had to deal with the patent offices of some countries only. All technical development and the computer science progress of the second part of 20th century make both the national application and the international application surprisingly increase, in order to protect their inventions. For filing international patent application with easy, the Patent Cooperation Treaty(PCT) concluded in 1970, makes it possible to seek patent protection for an invention simultaneously in each of a large number of countries by filing an international patent application. Under these two treaties, national and international patent application have regarded as the increased expenditure of time and money that results from the formal requirements and the various patentablity of their own laws. In the light of the harmonization of patent law, the Patent law Treaty(hereinafter PLT) which was concluded in June 2000 simplifies and streamlines procedures obtaining and maintaining a patent on a world wide basis. The main purpose of this Treaty is to make the patent laws of Contracting Countries revise for the harmonization to file a patent application more efficient, less costly and less time- consuming. This article focuses on the patent law harmonization and its adoption into Korean Patent law, in particular Article 5 of PLT(the filing date). Initially, this briefly introduces and touches upon the PLT and Substantive Patent Law Treaty(SPLT) which overview WIPO's patent harmonization on a worldwide level. Secondly, this describes that the filing date of PLT which is considered as the cornerstone of the treaty, is the basis of very simple requirements and maximum formalities requirements. And the work to adopt the filing date into Korean Patent Act is for the implementation of PLT based on the streamline and the harmonization over the world. Thirdly, this article concludes with a summary of possible future activities related to the PLT, SPLT and PCT(included the Reform of PCT) for harmonization of patent laws, and make a suggestion for our Patent Act which reflects upon these international activities.