캐나다 ‘특허강제실시’ 제도의 진화와 그 경제적 함의

Canada has experienced a period of strengthened requirement for patent compulsory licensing after a period of mitigated requirement. Canada introduced a general patent compulsory licensing provisions relating to patent abuse in the amended Patent Act of 1903. Specific compulsory licensing provisions for medicines and food were introduced in 1923 according to the British precedent. The compulsory licensing of medicines was reinforced in 1969. Like this, compulsory licensing regime had been flexibly designed by the Canadian government until the WTO and other international agreements restricted it. However, compulsory provisions for the Medicines were significantly weakened in 1987 due to economic pressure from the US. Canada found that the strengthening of the patent compulsory licensing stabilized the price of medicines, and brought the growth of generic pharmaceutical industry. Canada also also saw that weakening of compulsory licensing did not necessarily caused to increase R&D investment of multinational corporations. ‘Social experiment’ of Canada shows that Article 31 of TRIPs of requirement for granting patent compulsory licensing needs to be more lenient than the current version.