The Working Group for a Development Agenda is examining the utility of patent protection for a country’s development.
Despite considerable pressure from abroad, Switzerland was slow in adopting patent laws and did so only to the extent that it complemented its own development. The Swiss industry positions expressed in this composite text show that strict patent protection is not necessarily conducive to the development of a national economy or a branch of industry and that Swiss industry as a whole benefited from weak patent protection for many years.