Convention de Paris pour la protection de la propriété industrielle

Introduction

One key turning point in terms of Industrial property law, as we proceed into the maturation of the Industrial Age, particularly as seen from an international and somewhat patent-focused perspective, is the Convention de Paris pour la protection de la propriété industrielle. This was signed in Paris, France, on 20 March 1883, and was one of the first intellectual property treaties. It established a Union for the protection of industrial property. The Convention is currently still in force. The substantive provisions of the Convention fall into three main categories: national treatment, priority right and common rules. It is often called the Paris Convention in patents or intellectual property contexts.

After a diplomatic conference in Paris in 1880, the Convention was signed in 1883 by 11 countries: Belgium, Brazil, France, Guatemala, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, El Salvador, Serbia, Spain and Switzerland. Guatemala, El Salvador and Serbia denounced and reapplied the convention via accession.

Revisions

The Treaty was revised at Brussels, Belgium, on 14 December 1900, at Washington, United States, on 2 June 1911, at The Hague, Netherlands, on 6 November 1925, at London, on 2 June 1934, at Lisbon, Portugal, on 31 October 1958, and at Stockholm, Sweden, on 14 July 1967. The Treaty was amended on 28 September 1979. The developments of 1900 and 1911 are somewhat fleshed out on our Union Treaty of June 2, 1911. There are cases of the 1900 revision, along with the initial treaty, being invoked or explicated on original patent documents, vis-à-vis priority date and otherwise. There are cases of the 1911 revision being invoked or explicated on original patent documents, vis-à-vis priority date and otherwise.

International variation in terms of how or whether protocol compliance is made explicit on patents

Among nations party to this treaty and its protocols, the explication of compliance, in terms of dates of international significance displayed on actual patent documents, varies from to country to country. The German examples referenced above are exquisite in these terms. The French seem to have been fairly fastidious. See Patent FR-1913-461233, for example. Reference is made to a Belgian original: “(Demande de brevet déposée en Belgique le 10 août 1912. - Déclaration du déposant.)” This phraseology is standardized, everything in terms of “Déclaration du déposant”. We don’t know of any false “déclarations”. In any case, this data is consistently entered on the French originals. Other national protocols seem to have been similarly fastidious, such as is seen on Austrian patents. British patents, when they make reference, use reference date phraseology “convention priority”, though the British documents occasionally fail to make any reference. We have put international patent families together taking all these factors into account. Hungary presents an odd case, in that the antique originals very rarely lack any such references, though our digital era colleagues have gone to the trouble of separately entering pertinent dates “of convention priority”. So, the Convention protocols were legally binding among signatory nations, though the explicit handling of this fact, whether contemporaneous or retrospective, has been handled variably, on a nation-by-nation basis.

Notes

It may be noted within our data that reference is often made to the laws passed in 1883, and that there is a traceable continuation of this framework up into our own day.

Likewise, fairly frequent references to this or that patent's "convention priority date" is a reference to the first filing date of any specific invention or innovation, be it an "addition" or not, in the context of fairly exact equivalent patents being filed in multiple nations, all in keeping with the legislation following from this conference. This is not always found on every patent original, and the "priority date" field on Espacenet only sometimes properly indicates data of this nature. In the case of Spanish data displayed on inventor-name-based results displays on Espacenet, we quite often see "priority dates" which are too late in fact to comport with this. In these cases, it seems likely that the data entered is that of the individiual patent's filing date, there perhaps not having been ready access to the true and internationally recognized priority date.

The use of the word "industrial", here, as opposed to "intellectual", seems to comport with the overwhelming usage of the times.

Signatories treated chronologically

Source: w:List of parties to international patent treaties, which has more detailed information, e.g. on exact timing of ratification.

• Belgium 1884-07-07
• Brazil 1884-07-07
• France 1884-07-07
• Italy 1884-07-07
• Netherlands 1884-07-07[f]
• Portugal 1884-07-07
• Spain 1884-07-07
• Switzerland 1884-07-07
• Tunisia 1884-07-07
• United Kingdom 1884-07-07[k]
• Norway 1885-07-01
• Sweden 1885-07-01
• United States 1887-05-30
• Dominican Republic 1890-07-11
• Denmark 1894-10-01
• Japan 1899-07-15
• Germany 1903-05-01
• Mexico 1903-09-07
• Cuba 1904-11-17
• Austria 1909-01-01[a]
• Hungary 1909-01-01[a]
• Morocco 1917-07-30
• Poland 1919-11-10
• Romania 1920-10-06
• Bulgaria 1921-06-13
• Finland 1921-09-20
• Luxembourg 1922-06-30
• Lebanon 1924-09-01
• Syria 1924-09-01
• Greece 1924-09-28
• Canada 1925-06-12
• Australia 1925-10-10
• Turkey 1925-10-10
• Ireland 1925-12-04
• New Zealand 1931-07-29[h]
• Liechtenstein 1933-07-14

Sources

See Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property on English Wikipedia or Convention de Paris pour la protection de la propriété industrielle on French Wikipedia.