ABSTRACT
The patent monopoly by its nature gave its owner strong rights over the making of the invention, including the terms on which it could be licensed. An arrangement between two producers dividing market territories and setting limits on production, which would have been illegal in the absence of a patent monopoly, could be legal as a patent licensing arrangement. Patent-based cartels were most strongly present in the chemical and pharmaceutical fields. Chemical companies became the biggest users of the patent system. The chemical and pharmaceutical oligopolies of the 20th century will, using intellectual property rights over biotechnological processes and products, progressively transform themselves into the biogopolies of the 21st. Biotechnology is a fundamental technology that reaches into all aspects of four very basic areas: food, health, reproduction and environment. Multinationals may now register product patents in developing countries such as India, thereby giving themselves options in those markets that they previously did not have.
