Since it was developed mainly during the industrial revolution to protect material innovations, patent law cannot be applied to "intangible industrial inventions".

Software for example is denied patentability due to its lack of materiality. Such a justification for this denial is economic nonsense, international patent law must be adapted to cover the emerging virtual world. This has not been done. Unsuited to modern innovation, international patent law has reached a period of decline.

This decline is due to the fact that despite the existence of international agreements, States have now come to ignore the framework of the patent system (for

software) and sometimes to adopt new international agreements (for semi-conductor chips). This book explains how we reached this situation, and how and

why we should urgently modernize and rebalance the international patent system.