Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-26-2026
Abstract
Over the past half-century, rapid technological change and globalization have reshaped innovation and intellectual property, yet the foundational international agreements anchoring the global patent system have remained essentially unchanged. The drafters of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property and the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) viewed these agreements as dynamic instruments that, through procedural coordination, would rationalize international patent administration. The Paris Convention has resisted reform for decades, however, while the PCT has failed to achieve its goals of reducing examination workloads and fostering worksharing among national patent offices. It now exacerbates the very inefficiencies it sought to address, remaining popular primarily because it allows inventors to delay filing patent applications. As patent examination enters an era of AI-assisted automation, the PCT’s aspiration of shared patent office work product rests on outdated assumptions about the administrative capacity of individual agencies. PCT fees also largely finance the World Intellectual Property Organization, diverting resources from the essential tasks of patent examination. As an alternative to the PCT, this Article proposes an additional pathway for multinational patent acquisition, namely, a patent office–administered system under which a single filing with one authority is deemed a direct national filing in other jurisdictions.
Scholarly Commons Citation
Thomas, John R., "Reprioritizing International Patent Law" (2026). Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works. 2689.
https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/2689