This study presents to the English-speaking legal profession a synthetic picture of the international regime of industrial property, by a method which combines the common-law and the civil-law technique. The first part considers the international regime of industrial property before the constitution of the Industrial Property Union in 1883, as it was governed by the municipal law of various countries and bipartite agreements. The second, and main, part surveys the protection and relation of industrial property at the present time in the Industrial Property Union. In a separate section of this part, the inter-American regime of industrial property under the Pan-American conventions is described. The last part deals with the future development of industrial property and the efforts for the protection of scientific property.

Lawyers and corporations have a vital interest in the regulation and protection of industrial property—patents, designs, trademarks, trade names, and repression of unfair competition—and in the problems raised by agreements between enterprises, nationally and internationally. Since World War II, there has been increasing ferment for changes in the whole system of industrial property. Pressures have been building up from administrations concerned with the functioning of the patent and trademark system; from private enterprises affected by delays, costs, and insecurities of the system; from developing countries anxious to receive and adapt foreign technology at reasonable cost and without excessive restriction; and from the increasing tendency of antitrust law to curb even legal monopolies in order to ensure free competition.

This major work describes the national and international regime of patents, trademarks, technological know-how, and related rights of industrial property; the conflicting interests and demands for recognition and satisfaction in this field; the international efforts and arrangements achieved for harmonization of law and procedure; the problems involved in the transfer of technology for the technical and economic development of countries pressing for assistance; and the controls established by statutory and decisional law against restriction of competition by the exercise of industrial property rights.