Patent Law in Pakistan and the United Kingdom: A Comparative Legal Analysis of Legislative, Judicial and Pharmaceutical Patent Frameworks

Abstract

This article makes a comparative legal study of the patent law regimes of Pakistan and the United Kingdom. The Patents Ordinance 2000 of Pakistan and the Patents Act 1977 of the United Kingdom have the same statutory structure and have both been designed to comply with the minimum standards set by the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and, in the case of the UK, the European Patent Convention. However, a comparative study of the two regimes shows that there is a constant disparity between the formal compliance of Pakistan with the treaties and their effectiveness. This article, using a doctrinal and comparative legal approach, with independently sourced statistical data from the World Intellectual Property Organization and the UK Intellectual Property Office, compares the two jurisdictions on four aspects: the legal framework for patentability, term and compulsory use; the institutional architecture for administering each regime, including comparative filing volumes and Global Innovation Index rankings; the development of patent doctrine through case law; and the specific case of pharmaceutical patents, where the article concludes that Pakistan has never formally granted a pharmaceutical compulsory licence in over two and a half decades of TRIPS membership. The comparative analysis shows that the legislative, institutional and judicial shortcomings in Pakistan are interwoven and the article ends with a calibrated TRIPS-compatible reform programme that is based on, but not uncritically adopted from, the legislative practice of the UK and India.