A report on - Where is Pakistan in the Patent World

Setting the Context:

For some of us who decided to read this report (esp my countrymen) this may shock you

“Yes, Pakistan has patent office and it promises to protect patents and other IP in the country!”.

Being a patent knowledge explorer, I came across to a link on WIPO academy on Global Network on Intellectual Property (IP) Academies which has been launched in order to support the work and sharing of resources, including training programs, of the Global Network of IP Academies and to provide an effective forum for exchanging of views and experiences among the members of the network. India does not seem to be part of this program.

On this page I learned that Pakistan has its own patent law system and does promise innovators to protect their patents in the country.

Scope & Safe statements:

This report is exploratory in nature and does not represent my employer’s opinion. The analysis presented in this article is based on data provided by Pakistan IPO website. I do not guarantee the accuracy of data & analysis presented here. Please free to post your comments and suggestions. I hope you will enjoy this report.

Genesis of Patents in Pakistan

Patent Act in Pakistan evolved from the original (Indian) Patents and Designs Act, 1911 and was amended as Patents Ordinance 2002 & Designs Ordinance, 2000. Intellectual Property Organization is under a Cabinet Division of Pakistani Government. However, I am not sure which ministry owns the responsibility of enforcement and protecting the rights conferred by the state. The website of the Patent office seems to be well organized and easy to navigate.

The basic premise of patentability is standard and is same as Indian law i.e. The invention should be new, involves an inventive step, capable of industrial application, and should not be contrary to law or morality. However, PTO is not much concerned about industrial application. Software is not patentable in Pakistan.

The prosecution procedure also seems to be standard viz. filing the “application”, examination and acceptance of application by the patent office, overcoming opposition, grant of patent, and sealing the patent.

Patent Statistics:

Pakistan patent office website provides data of patents granted from year 2005 till February 2010. They have used varying format for providing the data. This section is a “bird’s eye view” of granted patents in Pakistan.

Patent Grants from Year 2005 to February 2010 in Pakistan

There are around 1064 patent grants in the past five years. The patent grant in Pakistan has witnessed a steep decline. There may be multiple reasons for this. It may be due to backlog of black/mail box application relating to chemical products intended for use in agriculture and medicines. The application will be kept dormant until 31^st December 2004. Also, the political instability of the state seems to have affected the patents in the country very hard.

The data provided by the PTO is not consistent and have limited information. Filing date was provided for only 424 patents. Based on this data the average grant period is around 4 years. However, some pharmaceutical patents took more than 10 years in grant process.

My further analysis point was the “brave J” applicants who are filings  patents in the state. I have noticed an obvious trend of Pharmaceutical and Chemical companies monopolizing the patent filings in underdeveloped economies. Information & Communication Technology (ICT) companies choose to stay away as Pakistan has pretty much open borders with China (politically)!

Following figure segments applicants in broad industry areas.

Patent Grants by Industry

There were three Indian companies and one individual inventor who filed patents in Pakistan. These are:

CSIR India, Godfrey Philips India Ltd,India, Cipla,Ltd,and Dr.Adhijit De

There has been a very small portion of the total filings filed by Local companies and inventors. Local sports equipment manufacturer showed trust on the national patent office and filed patents seeking protection on football, cricket bat and balls etc.

Top Applicants in each category are:

A compiled patent data could be downloaded from this link.

During the quick scanning of the data, I have seen some interesting patents. Some of them are:

• A patent on credit card rewards system filed by Citi Financial Corporation.
• Recording and /or playback device comprising means for writing and /or reading information blocks in an information tract filed jointly by Philips Electronics & Sony Corporation
• A simulated smoking article filed by British American Tobacco (Investments) Ltd,Uk
• Genes and polypeptides relating to human colon cancers filed by Oncotherapy Science
• A mousetrap for trapping and /or killing mice filed by Reckitt Benckiser Healthcare
• Creation method for characters/Words and the information and communication service method thereby filed by Neopad Inc.Korea.
• Solid Fuel Stove filed by and ex. Pakistani army man Lt. Col. (R) Mahmud Shah
• A cricket pitch filed by Lourens Steyn Australia

Conclusion:
As WIPO member Pakistan seems to be working towards the protection of IP in the country. The PTO did a fairly good job in putting up a website. However, due to Pakistan’s current Socio political environment, there has been a steep decline in the patent filings and grant in the country.

Current political environment force me to think that the government of Pakistan (don’t know who!) should be protecting the innovators first than the innovation in the company. Pakistani economy and innovation seems to be surviving only due to the foreign government and companies.

I apologize for any of my comment which may have hurt the sentiments of anyone. 

Apple Sourcing Technology for ipod from outside!

Foxconn Technology Group recently sold 5 patents to Apple inc. which are related to electrical connector of the ipod. These connectors are used for power transmission and improved strain resistance.

Following drawings are taken from the patents which may indicate future/present ipod (or other Apple  device) connectors in the market.

Apple bought these patents in January this year and these were formally recorded at USPTO in April.

US7632134 Electrical Connector Having Protective Member
US7654856 Cable Connector Assembly Having Strain Relief Member For Cable
US20090298322 Cable Connector Assembly Having Strain Relief Member For Cable
US20090298339 Cable Connector Assembly Having Strain Relief Member For Cable
US20100120290 Cable Connector Assembly With Sticky Film 

As the world is getting smaller by technology, companies operating in any domain must look beyond internal R&D outputs.  More companies are adopting "Proudly Found Elsewhere" culture and maintaining a competitive edge in the market. Companies must overcome "Not Invented Here" syndrome and start using or buying already existing products, research or knowledge (but by buying or licensing not stealing).

Patent Data Application – Series I

Law Practice planning through patent data analysis

This new series aims to find possible role of patents in decision support and business development. In this post, I am trying to list some possible applications of patent data in business planning for small and medium sized law firms.

Law firms are like any commercial entity which need cash, clients, Intangible assets, competitive edge and right business planning to stay profitable. Patent data are wealth of information that could be leveraged to find invisibles and data for strategic decision. 

In my view, the patent data can be used for:

Business Planning:

Practice location planning: Many PTOs around the world provide bibliographic data which could be used to map inventor, assignee, technology area, etc. A law firm expanding their practice and planning new offices in a country could use these data to plan offices, resources, and predict financial benefits based on past filings.

Resource Planning: Patents are indicators of technological advancements. An emerging law firm may want to plan its resource based on market demands and technological advancements in certain geographic region. A patent based trend analysis can provide interesting insights towards legal and technical resource requirements in foreseeable future.

Business Development:

Targeting New Clients: Patent data could give valuable insights about target companies. It may help the BD officers to target right in-house attorneys, assess technical areas of filings, profile target company, etc.

Finding Share of Wallet: Data analysis could help medium sized law firms in analyzing whether the top clients are using competitor law firms for their filings. This could help in gauging effectiveness of service, client loyalty, and possible business negotiation areas.

Building new partnerships: Companies file patents at various geographies. Patent data could help small and medium sized law firms find possible overseas partners who can cross refer each other in case of patent family extensions. This analysis could be done looking at various angles.

Competitive Benchmarking & Intelligence

Benchmarking Pendency: This analysis could help a law firm in making a better business pitch. A law firm with lower pendency may help in winning more accounts. Also, this analysis could be extended to see if patent filed by competition have seen significant change in claims during prosecution.

Claim Strength analysis: A semi-automated analysis to benchmark competition on claim strength.  There are various proven scoring mechanisms that could also be used to make better business case.

Resource mapping: Various countries allow law firms to put information about their practice areas and resources or various patent offices provide attorney data. This data could valuable source of information in order to map resources and law firms. This analysis is best done when complemented with primary and secondary research data.

Effective Prosecution:

Examiner relationship network: Law firms can conduct examiner relationship network to understand how examiners world together in various technology areas. Also, a technology specific network may also provide leads to HR department.

Technology area and type of rejections: A law firm specializing in niche areas or emerging technology areas may want to understand common prosecution hurdles. This may help them in better planning while drafting applications. This analysis could be combined with examiner analysis to identify any pattern.

Patent application scoring: Law firms handling clients with large volume of pending application can use proven techniques to prioritize efforts. The scoring can be done on various parameters.

Challenges:

Underlying Data: The above mentioned analyses are data intensive and require correct data for any meaningful result.

Automation: Based on my experiences with PTO data, I think data provided by patent offices around the world require lot of normalization. They are in no way ready to use for such data intensive analysis. Automation is essential for such analysis. Automation can be used for range of activities such as pulling right data from websites, normalizing & cleaning crude data.

Data handling: These analyses may involve data which may run in hundreds of thousands of records. These analyses also require correct understanding of the data. A single data handling mistake can change the face of entire analysis.

Risk of misinterpretation: “Little knowledge could be dangerous” this is true for these kinds of analysis. The end user and analyst must question the output and check the sanity of the results.

Conclusion:

These are only some ideas on patents and its application in this context. These are based on my experiences and similar consulting projects.  There could be other numerous applications of patent data that could help law firms.

These analyses are certainly worth spending time and money. These analyses could help a law firm in not only expanding its practice but also for regular health check. However, with a caveat that external factor should be considered while taking any action. These analyses can provide actionable intelligence but cannot replace human judgment and creativity. 

Patently Poem - Hope is a strange invention

Hope is a strange invention --
A Patent of the Heart --
In unremitting action
Yet never wearing out --

Of this electric Adjunct
Not anything is known
But its unique momentum
Embellish all we own --


by Emily Dickinson