Harmonization's major benefit is that it cuts legal fees, particularly for pharmaceutical inventions, whose applications are typically filed in several countries. Third, harmonization creates certainty of patent rights. Businesses need to know what actions in different countries are going to be covered by a given patent. Fourth, harmonization creates value. The more certainty you bring to the scope of a patent worldwide, the more value you create.
Harmonization is a slow process.
Over time, however, all of the baby steps toward harmonization described in this article have cumulatively been bringing the laws of different countries closer together. Some day, perhaps our laws will be similar enough for one patent to suffice worldwide.