Hosein signs WIPO agreement to boost local patent drafting capacity

The Min­istry of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs has signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU) with the World In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WIPO) aimed at strength­en­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ca­pac­i­ty for patent draft­ing and sup­port­ing lo­cal in­no­va­tors.

Min­is­ter of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Sad­dam Ho­sein signed the agree­ment on be­half of Trinidad and To­ba­go dur­ing the 68th WIPO Gen­er­al As­sem­blies in Gene­va, Switzer­land.

The part­ner­ship seeks to ad­dress a gap in the coun­try’s in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty sys­tem, where lo­cal in­ven­tors cur­rent­ly have to re­ly on for­eign ex­per­tise to pre­pare patent ap­pli­ca­tions. The min­istry said this is due to lim­it­ed pri­vate sec­tor ca­pac­i­ty and le­gal re­stric­tions pre­vent­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Of­fice (TTIPO) from pro­vid­ing patent draft­ing ser­vices.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­istry, the de­pen­dence on over­seas ser­vices has af­fect­ed na­tion­al in­no­va­tion da­ta and con­tributed to a low­er rank­ing on the Glob­al In­no­va­tion In­dex.

Ho­sein said Trinidad and To­ba­go has no short­age of in­no­va­tors, but de­vel­op­ing lo­cal ex­per­tise in patent draft­ing re­mains a key re­quire­ment to sup­port their work.

He said the agree­ment will cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties to train qual­i­fied pro­fes­sion­als in a spe­cialised field that is in de­mand lo­cal­ly and across the Caribbean.

The ini­tia­tive is ex­pect­ed to en­cour­age more lo­cal patent fil­ings while help­ing in­ven­tors pro­tect and com­mer­cialise their ideas. It will al­so sup­port the safe­guard­ing of cul­tur­al ex­pres­sions and cre­ative works orig­i­nat­ing from Trinidad and To­ba­go.

WIPO Di­rec­tor Gen­er­al Dar­ren Tang wel­comed Ho­sein at the as­sem­bly and praised Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ef­forts to strength­en sup­port for cre­ators and in­no­va­tors.

The Min­istry said the pro­gramme will com­ple­ment ex­ist­ing ini­tia­tives through TTIPO, in­clud­ing pre-patentabil­i­ty search­es and re­search fund­ing sup­port.

Of­fi­cials said build­ing lo­cal patent draft­ing ex­per­tise will pro­vide in­ven­tors with greater ac­cess to ser­vices need­ed to trans­form ideas in­to com­mer­cial­ly vi­able prod­ucts and so­lu­tions while strength­en­ing the coun­try’s in­no­va­tion ecosys­tem.