[Ip-health] "breaking patents"

[g.m.dutfield@qmul.ac.uk]

I wonder if anybody on the list could please let me know the source and origin
of the term "breaking patents", which gets used rather a lot these days by the
press. It seems to me that this is a rather dangerous term that journalists
should be advised not to use. Compulsory licensing and government use
provisions are standard elements of the private-public interest balance of the
patent laws of many countries and have a long history dating back, in the case
of government use, to the original 1474 Venetian law of patents for invention.
They should certainly not be treated as a "breakage" of the patent rights. The
patent of course remains valid even when a compulsory license is granted but
the term rather strongly implies this is not the case. Perhaps we all should do
more to challenge such (deliberately?) misleading terms.

Many thanks in advance.

Graham Dutfield

Queen Mary, University of London