Patents for Humanity: improving lives across the globe

By Edward Elliott*, Attorney Advisor, Patents for Humanity Program Manager, United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), USA

*Authored by an employee of the United States Patent and Trademark Office; no copyright is claimed by the United States in this article or associated materials.

Patents for Humanity is a United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) awards program that recognizes innovators who overcome these challenges to bring life-changing technologies to those in need. Its purpose is twofold. First, it highlights success stories so that others can learn how to reach underserved communities. Second, by providing value to award winners, the program seeks to offset some of the diminished commercial incentives in these regions, thereby encouraging more innovation projects aimed at helping impoverished communities. This value includes public recognition of winners’ work and a voucher for accelerating certain matters before the USPTO.

Participants submit applications describing how they are using patented technology to benefit the less fortunate in five broad categories of humanitarian need: medicine, nutrition, sanitation, energy and living standards. Once the application period closes, we run a two-phase selection process with volunteer experts from outside the USPTO, including university faculty and technology transfer professionals, to review the entries according to program criteria. The review committee then sends a list of recommended award winners to the USPTO.

The first Patents for Humanity competition launched in early 2012 as a pilot program. Since then, it has attracted support from the White House and members of the U.S. Congress as well as many companies, trade associations, public interest groups and universities. In 2014, the USPTO announced that Patents for Humanity would be an ongoing program. Subsequent rounds of Patents for Humanity awards were made in April 2015 and most recently November 2016.

To date, Patents for Humanity has given 21 awards to all types of entities, from large multinational corporations to small companies and startups as well as universities and non-profit organizations. These recipients show how even a small group of people with focus and commitment can impact lives around the globe. The program is open to all U.S. patent owners and licensees. Three awards have gone to organizations based in Europe.

Past award winners include patent owners using their portfolios to decrease the cost of HIV and malaria drugs, develop more nutritious food sources, bring solar energy to off-grid villages, combat unsafe counterfeit medicines and purify billions of liters of water using inexpensive packets. Award winners from the past two cycles include:

* Sanofi, for supplying large quantities of anti-malarial compounds on an at-cost basis for use in developing countries.
* Novartis, for identifying new drug compounds for potentially treating drug-resistant tuberculosis and donating them to the non-profit TB Alliance for further development.
* SunPower Corp, for delivering clean solar-powered lighting to replace kerosene in villages in the Philippines through converted shipping containers.
* American Standard Brands, for distributing 1.2 million “SaTo” safe toilet latrine pans to communities in Africa and Southeast Asia.
* GRIT (Global Research Innovation & Technology), for developing an all-terrain wheelchair using readily available bicycle parts for use in India, Guatemala, Haiti and other locations.
Golden Rice, for creating vitamin A-enriched strains of rice to prevent thousands of cases of blindness and death each day among people who subsist primarily on rice.
* Nutriset, for fighting childhood malnutrition by creating a worldwide network of partners to supply their PlumpyNut formula using local producers.
* GestVision, for developing a quick, simple diagnostic test for preeclampsia, a potentially life-threatening pregnancy complication, for use in developing regions.
* Case Western Reserve University, for creating a low-cost, accurate malaria detection device using magnets and lasers for quicker diagnosis and treatment.
* Global Good Fund, for creating a passive cooler that can keep vaccines cold for 30 days, and for donating dozens of units to the fight against Ebola and other relief efforts.
* U.S. Food and Drug Administration, for developing an improved meningitis vaccine production process that has been used to immunize 235 million people in high-risk African countries.

An estimated 65 million people in the developing world require wheelchairs. Conventional wheelchairs do not function well on the rough and uneven terrain commonly found in developing regions. GRIT was created by engineering graduates from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to increase mobility for people with disabilities around the world. Their three-wheel Leveraged Freedom Chair uses a push-lever drivetrain to help people move over uneven terrain such as broken pavements, dirt roads, fields, hills, rocky terrain and more. It is built from standard bicycle parts to enable local repairs with available materials. After graduating, the MIT students founded GRIT to bring the product to market, and MIT assisted by transferring the patent rights to GRIT for further development.

The chair has been distributed in partnership with the World Bank, the Red Cross and others in Brazil, Easter Island (Chile), Guatemala, Guinea, Haiti, India, Kenya, Nepal and the United Republic of Tanzania. A new version of the chair, known as the Freedom Chair, is now available in the United States for recreational use, helping Americans move beyond the pavement.

For more information on Patents for Humanity, including the latest announcements, visit www.uspto.gov/patentsforhumanity

Trademark amendments: Protecting ‘sound, smell and colours'

The “sound, smell and colours” produced by Malaysian companies will be protected under amendments to the Trade Marks Act 1976.

The move, which is meant to upgrade related laws, would also address issues such as monetisation of intellectual property (IP) and infringement, said Intellectual Property Corporation of Malaysia (MyIPO) intellectual property adviser Abdul Aziz Ismail.

Another provision that would be included is the procedure for single filing. This allows for a person to get protection from various member countries under the World Intellectual Property Orga­nisation (WIPO).

“It will be tabled in Parliament in March after we get the go ahead from the Domestic Trade, Co-operatives and Consumerism Ministry and the Attorney-General’s Chambers,” he said during a seminar by the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (Ideas) entitled “Are Intellectual Property Rights Under Siege in Malaysia?” yesterday.

“MyIPO proposed to revamp the Trade Marks Act as it was an old one that was based on Britain’s Trade Marks Act 1938.

“There are a lot of new provisions, especially on the NTM (new trade mark) issues such as sound, smell and colours, and the procedure for single filing to get protection from the various member countries under Wipo,” he said.

The timeline for the law to be in place would be before 2018 or the first quarter of 2018.

Abdul Aziz said changes to the law would still be carried out although US President-elect Donald Trump would likely withdraw the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

When asked whether the relevant laws would still be amended if the TPPA was cancelled, Domestic Trade, Co-operatives and Consumerism Ministry principal assistant director Burhan Irwan Cheong said that the law reform would continue.

“But there may be internal review on some of the standards that we are going to introduce purely because of TPP obligations.

“That internal review has not been finalised. There will be a discussion with the lead ministry, Miti (Ministry of International Trade and Industry) this week.

-- The Star

Kerajaan Usaha Wujud Lembaga Penilai Harta Intelek

Kerajaan sedang berusaha menubuhkan Lembaga Penilai Harta Intelek bagi mengeluarkan prosedur operasi standard (SOP) untuk menilai harta intelek (IP) di negara ini, kata Menteri Perdagangan Dalam Negeri, Koperasi dan Kepenggunaan (KPDNKK) Datuk Seri Hamzah Zainudin.

Menyasarkan penubuhan lembaga itu selewat-lewatnya pada akhir tahun ini, beliau berkata lembaga itu berperanan mengesahkan penilaian sedia ada, yang dilakukan oleh konsultan IP diiktiraf oleh agensi antarabangsa.

Penubuhan lembaga itu akan dikendalikan oleh Jabatan Penilaian dan Perkhidmatan Harta (JPPH) dan Perbadanan Harta Intelek Malaysia (MyIPO).

"JPPH dan MyIPO akan memulakan kerjasama ini secepat mungkin bagi mengumpul penilai IP yang terbaik untuk menentukan SOP, nilai, standard, penanda aras dan sektor sesuatu IP itu nanti.

"Kita percaya usaha ini boleh membantu meningkatkan ekonomi negara kerana IP dianggap aset utama perniagaan yang boleh menjana tunai," katanya kepada pemberita selepas menyaksikan pemeteraian Memorandum Persefahaman (MoU) di antara JPPH dan MyIPO.

Sehingga kini, negara mempunyai 23 orang penilai IP yang diiktiraf oleh agensi antarabangsa hasil inisiatif dan kerjasama MyIPO dengan World Trade Institute (WTI) University of Bern, Switzerland.

Hamzah berkata MoU di antara JPPH dan MyIPO itu, antara lain akan mewujudkan rangka kerja lengkap dalam menjadikan IP sebagai instrumen cagaran dalam kewangan untuk tujuan pembiayaan.

"Pada masa kini kerja-kerja penilaian IP masih baharu dan dalam peringkat pembangunan sebab itu rangka kerja sedang dijalankan untuk memastikan hak pemberi pinjaman dan peminjam," katanya.

Dalam perkembangan lain, Hamzah berkata sejumlah 53 produk tempatan berjaya didaftarkan sebagai IP negara di bawah komponen petunjuk geografi.

"Beberapa produk tempatan dilabel sebagai IP antaranya Lada Hitam Sarawak, Rumpai Laut Sabah dan Asam Pedas Melaka. Produk ini diiktiraf kerana keunikan berdasarkan kedudukan geografinya di negara ini," katanya.

-- BERNAMA