Guyana needs to sign on to a number of international agreements and enact new legislation to address trademark, copyright and patent issues in part related to the internet.
This was emphasised by several speakers on the first day of a two-day World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO)-sponsored seminar on intellectual property systems which opened at Le Meridien Pegasus Hotel yesterday.
Minister of Foreign Trade and International Co-operation, Clement Rohee said Guyana was in the process of substantially revising its intellectual property legislation with a view to fulfilling its obligations under the World Trade Organisation to make it TRIPS (Trade-Related aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) - compliant.
However, he said that apart from the costs involved in the implementation of some agreements, such as TRIPS, Guyana and other developing countries, because of the size of their administration and the complexity of the agreement, were experiencing difficulties in identifying needs and requirements in order to request assistance.
TRIPS is the WTO agreement which brought trade and intellectual property together binding the 145 WTO members to higher standards of protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights.
In getting on board the TRIPS Agreement, Rohee said that developing countries have had to make changes to both national laws and structures involving a great deal of effort and resources. The costs have been even greater to smaller vulnerable economies such as Guyana’s.
The agreement states that developed countries may on request provide technical and financial cooperation to developing countries to assist in the implementation of the agreement.
Compounding the difficulties in identifying needs and requirements, Rohee said that because of the small size of their populations, the developing countries did not have the requisite manpower and institutional capacity to be able to establish domestic offices and relevant agencies or to train personnel to deal with these matters.
Because of these factors, he said that a group of small vulnerable economies including Guyana and other Caribbean countries along with smaller Pacific islands had submitted a proposal which was to be tabled at the upcoming Special Session of the TRIPS Council.
The proposal states that it should be explicitly recognised that small vulnerable economies may designate a regional body as the competent authority for the implementation of the relevant provisions of the TRIPS Agreement and that Developed Country members of the WTO shall provide technical and financial assistance for the establishment of such bodies.
State counsel Vijaya Jagnandan said that Guyana was currently revising its intellectual property legislation in compliance with the TRIPS Agreement and replacing its colonial era laws.
In the area of trademarks, the law and practice is governed by the Trademarks Act, which is based on older UK legislation.
Stating that the Third and Fourth Schedule of the Trademarks Act were outdated, she noted that Guyana was not a party to two main treaties on international classifications, these treaties being, the Nice Agreement concerning the International Classification of Goods and Services for the purposes of the Registration of Marks and the Vienna Agreement establishing an International Classification of the Figurative Elements of Marks.
Jagnandan noted that the rapid growth of information technology, cyberspace, and the Internet had created inextricable links with commerce, trade and globalisation and as such the need has arisen for protection of marks and rights in signs on the internet. In Guyana there is no statutory provision for any such protection. In relation to the Patents Act, Jagnandan said that an application for a patent, which was supposed to take six months to process and grant, usually took six to seven years.
This delay was usually attributed to the lack of qualified examiners and the lack of a proper database or computer system to monitor and keep track of applications.
Further, she said that new technological methods such as the use of the internet and other publications were still being under utilised in deference to the older methods of examining inventions.
These problems, she said, could be eliminated by the ratification of the Patent Co-operation Treaty (PCT) system, in which a highly intensive International Search Report and International Preliminary Examination Report are utilised in examining patents.
Like the Trademarks Act the Patent Act, she said, was outdated adding that patents were not available for all inventions in respect of all products or processes as was required by TRIPS.
With respect to copyright legislation, Guyana operates under the 1956 UK Copyright Act, extended to Guyana by virtue of the copyright (British Guiana) Order of 1966. While this act establishes basic copyright protection under the Berne Convention to which Guyana is a signatory - but has yet to ratify - the act does not contain provisions in respect of computer programmes, rental rights for computer programmes among other works; and most of the related rights provided in the TRIPS Agreement.
The draft copyright bill, patterned after updated copyright laws of other CARICOM countries, facilitated common action in this field in the region, she said. In addition it complied with principal international agreements affecting copyright.
The Deeds Registry, which falls under the Attorney-General’s Office and the Ministry of Home Affairs is the national authority responsible for intellectual property rights.
Jagnandan said a CARICOM/Inter-American Development Bank report on compliance with the WTO agreement on TRIPS by CARICOM had stated that first and foremost Guyana required the adoption of new legislation in all areas of intellectual property - trademarks, patents, integrated circuits, plant varieties and border measures, etc.
Also making presentations were Geneva-based WIPO Consultant - Cooperation for Development Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean, Joaquin Alvarez; WIPO Assistant Programme Officer Developing Countries (PCT) Division, Paul Regis who looked at the General Framework of Intellectual Property; Jamaican attorney-at-law and UWI lecturer Dianne Daley who looked at an Overview of the basic notion of copyrights and related rights; and Technical Adviser, Intellectual Property and Agriculture, Malcolm Spence who looked at the general principles for the protection of trademarks and other distinctive signs. (Miranda La Rose)