New Clause 2 - Two patent grant system

Part of Patents Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 3:30 pm on 15 June 2004.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Malcolm Bruce Malcolm Bruce Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, Shadow Secretary of State for Trade and Industry 3:30, 15 June 2004

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

The new clause is intended to deal with what people might call vanity patents, whereby people try to record a patent simply to say, ''I am an inventor and I have secured a patent'', rather than to apply it commercially. If there were a two-stage process, we could simplify the procedure and ensure that all commercial patents got the full treatment. On Second Reading, my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare revealed that vanity patents of somewhat dubious character have gone through the whole process. The serious point is that the new clause intends to create a two-stage patent grant system that will free up time spent on vanity patents.

As we have discussed, obtaining a patent can be expensive. Official estimates suggest that it can cost around Euros 50,000 to obtain a patent in the EU. A small firm will have to pay the Patent Office hundreds of pounds to endorse their invention in a process that can take more than three years. A patent holder wants to be confident that the patent that he has purchased is worth the paper it is written on and will not be endlessly challenged.

Vanity patents mean that the Patent Office is diverted and has to spend much time examining ideas that were never intended for commercial use. We discussed some of the more ridiculous ideas on Second Reading, and there may be one or two more. Patent No. 1047735 is a plan to

''get snowballs of 10 ft in diameter to run down mountains in Antarctica, attaining speeds of about 500 mph, then being piped to Australia where they could be used to solve the world's famine problems.''

That is a genuine patent with its own number. Patent No. 1426698 is a plan for

''an automatic defence deterrent to solve the cold war problem'', which has been solved by other means. It would work by the UN placing

''nuclear bombs on three earth-orbiting satellites. If those satellites detected that one of the superpowers had been nuked, the bombs would automatically drop on Washington, Moscow and Peking, thus ensuring mutual destruction of all three.''—[Official Report, 7 June 2004; Vol. 58, c. 422.]

The idea that the Patent Office has spent serious time considering that as a piece of intellectual property that should be recorded and given a due number demonstrates that we do not need to use such resources, at least not to their full extent.

The Patent Office has suffered from a lack of resources in the past. To explain its rationale for contracting out several patent examinations to Denmark in March 2002, it admitted that the decision was

''part of wider efforts to deal with the rising input of patent work, which has, so far, not been matched by our ability to recruit and retain examining staff.''

My proposal is for a two-stage patenting process, which practically exists already. The Patent Office currently performs a preliminary search, and, subject to the patentee's agreeing to a full search and further fees, a full search is performed. Rejection can occur at a preliminary stage as well as later. The proposal for a two-stage patenting proposal allows the Patent Office to issue a preliminary patent grant certificate that should meet many of the needs of vanity patenting. As a full search has not been conducted at that point, the Patent Office cannot then be held responsible for any prior invention that it may have missed in the process. The new clause covers that point.

Under the proposal, a full search would be initiated only by those who seek a full patent, which could then be exploited for commercial purposes. This time, the Patent Office would be bound by the new clause to do its work thoroughly, because it would be held responsible for any errors made. In other words, the preliminary view says, ''Yes, you have a clever idea; you can record it.'' The thorough view, which follows,

says, ''We have now done an exhaustive search, and you have a commercially protected patent, which has the full status of patent protection.'' We contend that such a proposal could free the time of the patent office to examine commercially viable inventions, and give those patent holders more confidence in the service that they are buying when purchasing a patent.

The new clause makes a simple point. We could all list the endless ridiculous patents that have been recorded, but the point is that they are harmless if they do not take up too much time and effort and can be dealt with in a simple way. It is absurd that an awful lot of time and effort seems to be expended on recording those patents, and that there is no distinction between a vanity patent and a serious commercial patent. I would be interested to hear whether the Minister agrees that that is a real problem, and whether there is a system, such as that in this new clause, that would meet the needs of inventors who want their inventions recorded for posterity, while concentrating the resources of the Patent Office where they are most needed, ensuring that commercial patents are properly explored, processed and protected.