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World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) Archive

This year’s World Intellectual Property Day on April 26 focused on promoting green innovation as a key element in meeting the challenges of climate change In his message to mark the day, WIPO Director General Francis Gurry highlighted the contribution that a balanced intellectual property (IP) system can make in enabling the development of technology-based solutions to mitigate the impact of climate change.

The first to convert the discussion to action was the UK Intellectual Property Office when it announced that green inventions will be fast tracked through the patent process. David Lammy, Minister for Intellectual Property, announced the launch an initiative which will enable inventions with an environmental benefit to be given priority within the patent system.

There is speculation that companies in countries like India and China will take the lead in terms of green innovation. As per an Economic Times article a project by the Center for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), an Indian organization, has resulted in a solar powered rickshaw with a top speed of 15 km an hour and a range of 50-70 km. The rickshaw runs on a 36-volt battery that can be replaced at a local solar-power charging station. The vehicle is now being tested in Delhi with the aim of replacing some of the city’s 500 000 rickshaws. If successful, the soleckshaw as it is called, will provide a clean and relatively speedy option for moving around crowded Indian streets.

Another innovation in China produced an inexpensive solar powered car. The car has a sticker price of just over $5000 with a range of up to 150 km. The tiny Chery QQ clone has been fitted with roof mounted solar panels that absorb 95% of the solar energy coming in. Although not luxurious, the vehicle may still be attractive to the rising middle class population in China

The concept behind this speculation is simple – companies in emerging economies innovate in the face of price sensitivity, although their consumers have lower expectations. In the green sector emerging economy players have an additional motivation in the fact that they are often based in countries that are much more polluted than developed nations. There is market demand as well as government impetus to come up with inexpensive ways to clean up the air and water.

The WIPO initiative and a trend following the developments of green inventions being fast tracked through the patent process in the United Kingdom by other nations can kick start a movement where IP will have a definite role to play in mitigate the impact of climate change.

Categories: Asia, Intellectual Property, Policy, Uncategorized, World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), patents  |  Comments (0)

The issue of royalty payment has been recently discussed in an article “Public-funded R&D Bill — Creating the ecosystem for innovation” in The Business Line in India by Jyothi Datta. Relevant issue of royalty payment under Bayh Dole type legislation as per the article states:

“The draft Bill seeks to give back to the scientist or inventor, 30 per cent of the revenue from commercialization of his or her research. About 10 per cent is marked to the public-funded institute’s IP Management Cell and the rest of the revenue is ploughed back into the institute. The IPM Cell will help the researcher patent innovative work, besides negotiating with commercial institutions when it is ready to strike.”

Indian Bayh Dole like bill titled “Public Funded R & D Protection of Intellectual Property Bill, 2008” which is before the Indian Parliament provides that inventors receive 30 percent of any royalties stemming from licensing. A similar legislation in South Africa that was recently enacted known as the ‘Intellectual Property Rights from Publicly Financed Research and Development Act’ that intends to enable and encourage recipients of government-funding to protect as Intellectual Property and license the results of their research in order to provide incentives for those recipients to work with industry players to commercialize research. Section 10 of the legislation provides that the creators and the inventors get a portion of the royalty stream generated from the licensing of the invention.

Jyothi Datta points out to the comments by Dr Prabuddha Ganguli, who was on an international expert team to help draft a similar legislation for South Africa:

“Parameters have also been outlined on the royalty that would be paid to the scientist/institute when the patented research gets commercialised, says the Bill’s architect. But IP expert Dr Prabuddha Ganguli, who was recently on an international expert team to help draft a similar legislation for South Africa, is uncomfortable with attempts to outline parameters on issues such as royalty payment. The legislation should be a broad guiding framework and specifics should be left to the rules that are made later taking into account in the changing environment. Though he has not seen the draft of the proposed Indian legislation, he points out that there are several texts and sub-texts to the issue — like whether the research has been fully or partially funded by the government; definition of national interest and if the government exercises its “march-in” rights on a critical product, does it pay for it, and so on.”

WIPO commissioned reports on Tech. Transfer of various Asian Countries in 2003 and they had a set of guidelines for developing models which were divided into 3 levels:

1. National Policy on Intellectual Property and University-Industry Technology Transfer.
2. University Policy on Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer.
3. Institutional Set-up and Practical Aspects for Technology Transfer from Universities to Industry

They include Income distribution (or royalty sharing) as a part of “University Policy on Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer” and not a part of the National Policy/ Law, that is also Dr. Gangully’s  view on this issue as was published in an Indian Daily some time back.

In contrast Prof. Karen Hersey in her recent post “Royalty Sharing: A Matter of Law or a Matter of Policy” on the ITTI blog said that “setting a floor of 30% arguably accomplishes two things. first, it sends a message from government to research institutions receiving grants that the efforts of faculty and students who contribute to the process of innovation and commercialization is valued and second, it prevents grant recipients from, quite frankly, playing politics with rewards that their innovators justly earn.”

Although in an article published on SciDev.net, Shamnad Basheer (Ministry of HRD IP Chair Professor at WBNUJS, Kolkata) said that Indian IP Act would ensure that inventors receive at least 30 percent of any royalties stemming from licensing and the same is a laudable aspect of bill unlike the US Bayh-Dole Act, which leaves royalty-sharing policies to the academic institutions. Their remains to be dispute about the fact that having a mandatory provision for royalty sharing might not be the best of ideas and such specifics should be left to the rules that are made later taking into account in the changing environment or to the judgment of the University bodies, looking to their profits and the best way they can incentivize scientists and researchers to maximize the interest of the institutions.

References:

1. Karen Hersey, Royalty Sharing: A Matter of Law or a Matter of Policy, International Technology Transfer Blog. < http://blogs.piercelaw.edu/itti/2009/03/expert-views-prof-karen-hersey.html>
2. Shamnad Basheer, Indian patent bill: Let’s not be too hasty, SciDev.net. < http://www.scidev.net/en/opinions/indian-patent-bill-let-s-not-be-too-hasty.html>
3. Jyothi Datta, Public-funded R&D Bill — Creating the ecosystem for innovation, The Business Line. < http://www.blonnet.com/2008/04/23/stories/2008042350430800.htm>

 

Categories: Africa, Asia, Intellectual Property, Public-Private Partnerships (PPP), World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO)  |  Comments (0)

We all have friends or colleagues who appear to inhabit a “parallel universe,” false, divorced from reality, leading to disastrous personal and business decisions. All the more serious is it when an entire organization, in this case the World Trade Organization (WTO), attempts to base negotiations on such “parallel” realities, as it has with the CDB/TRIPS issue.

CBD/TRIPS refers to the relationship between the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). Throughout the 1990s, development “experts” asserted that WTO/TRIPS obligations conflicted with the CBD, the latter seeking to amend TRIPS patent obligations for genetic resources (GR) and related traditional knowledge (TK). In the current Doha round of trade negotiations, this belief has fueled demands to make disclosure of course and origin of GR (and possibly of TK) a requirement for patent applications and a new trigger for possible patent revocation. It is further being stated that this would be in the interest of developing countries.

Interestingly, thinking has advanced among CBD negotiators who have focused increasingly on how developing countries can create enabling environments to promote sustainable utilization of GR- and TK-related assets for the creation of meaningful benefits. (They realized that benefits can only be shared once benefits are created). Major developing countries recognize their responsibility for—and opportunities in—implementing regimes that facilitate access and promote the sharing of benefits from sustainable commercialization of natural products. At the most recent CBD ministerial meeting, for example, India’s minister for environment and forestry identified a lack of meaningful domestic implementation of CBD disciplines as the single most important barrier to benefit sharing.

Indeed, small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries share key qualities with large companies, including multinationals: they are risk takers, they are entrepreneurs, they are innovators, and they need reasonable intellectual property protection for their inventions to bring products to market that serve society. They are the new “bio-preneurs.” Particularly in the area of natural products, SME entrepreneurs in developing countries already work much harder than their U.S. or European counterparts in their efforts to protect patents needed to bring their innovative ideas to the market. Their results are impressive in more than one aspect. The progress is undoubtedly best epitomized by the large delegations of Brazil, India, Malaysia, and Thailand, among many other countries, that visit the annual meetings of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) where they network, meet collaborators and investors and all over the world.

Similarly, at the most recent CBD general meeting, negotiators agreed on a comprehensive road map for work over the next two years to elaborate and negotiate key measures to help states gain meaningful benefits from the sustainable development of biodiversity resources. Appropriately, amending patent regimes were not considered during these discussions.

Surprizingly, none of these positive developments under CDB percolated into the “Geneva environment”, where WTO negotiators are working overtime to dilute and weaken the very patents needed by developing country scientists and bio-preneurs. At latest report, more than 80 WTO members supported amending TRIPS to require new, mandatory disclosure obligations that would reduce the certain title to patents—the same title needed by bio-preneurs all over the world to raise capital and to survive the famous “valley of death” that leads to the demise of most start-up companies.

Any amendment to TRIPS would require changing patent law in most countries, weakening the protections needed by life-sciences companies, large or small, anywhere in the world. Additional disclosure obligations also would further increase costs as well as the risks of “gaming” the patent system, whereby unscrupulous competitors may initiate spurious litigation on the basis of incentives relating to disclosure of source/origin of genetic resources.

Creation of additional, new hurdles to biotechnology patents would increase uncertainty, would discourage commercial activities related to genetic resources, and would not expand or redistribute benefits. New mandatory patent disclosure obligations also adds additional responsibilities to overburdened patent offices that already face increasing backlogs to their effective operations, including those offices in most developing countries and even the U.S. and European offices. Although patent regime reform is urgently needed, any changes will take up to a decade to negotiate and another decade to implement. 

At the time of this writing, there seems to be a near consensus that renegotiating TRIPS and weakening the patent regimes is the cost that may lead to a successful conclusion to the Doha round. TRIPS is by no means perfect but the decade since its implementation has shown that developing countries in particular can gain much when they develop national laws, build transparent court systems, and strengthen enabling environments for bio-preneurs. And much more can be done in these areas.

Would it not be cynical to weaken life-science patents at a time when innovative and forward-looking enterprises in developing countries are taking off, in part thanks to the (imperfect though workable) patent regime? This is not to excuse any inappropriate access to germplasm (the so-called biopiracy) or unduly issued patents. It is simply a pragmatic idea. And it echoes the recent Commentary on www.Forbes.com by Susan Finston.

The pause in negotiations may be an ideal opportunity for Geneva negotiators to escape their seemingly parallel universe and pay the real world a visit. WTO negotiators, for example, could travel to Thailand’s BIOTec or Malaysia’s Sarawak Biodiversity Center or Brazil’s Sao Paulo area or Costa Rica’s INBio, to name but a few, and see how their own scientists and SMEs rely on appropriate patent protection for biodiversity resources. And, without wanting to ask too much, they could even bring WTO talks into conformity with those of the CBD—the international organization responsible for the development of international rules for access and benefit sharing (ABS).

Categories: Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS), Agricultural Biotechnology, BioEntrepreneurs, Biopiracy, Cnvention on Biological Diversity (CBD), Events, Intellectual Property, Patent Disclosure, Policy, TRIPS, Traditional Knowledge, World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), World Trade Organization (WTO)  |  Comments (1)