73. The representative of the United States said that he was raising the issue of revocation of patents and how the obligations under the TRIPS Agreement related to this issue, since the issue had been raised in other bodies of the WTO. The TRIPS Agreement addressed the issue of revocation of patents through Articles 27, 29 and 33. Pursuant to Article 27, WTO Members must grant patents for those inventions that were new, involved an inventive step and were capable of industrial application. Article 29 required as a condition for the grant of a patent that the applicant disclosed the invention in such a manner as to enable persons of ordinary skills to practise the invention. Article 33 provided that a patent that had been granted by a Member must last not less than 20 years from the earliest effective filing date claimed in the patent. Provisions existed in Article 27 which permitted WTO Members to exclude certain inventions from eligibility for patent protection. These provisions, however, did not contemplate the revocation of patents that had been granted for these inventions for which the WTO Member made protection available. As a result, patents could not be revoked by Members except on grounds that would have justified denial of the grant of a patent on the underlying application.
