Gahmen MadeOnly Two Quacks Give Up Their Patents In The Last 15 Years

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:



In response to a parliamentary question about the government respecting inventors’ patents, Senior Minister for Law Indranee Rajah, explained that since 2001, the government has revoked 2 patents.

The question had been fielded by Workers’ Party NCMP Gerald Giam who had been referring to the recent dispute about Dr Ting’s patented invention of a mobile health station which was ‘stolen’ by MINDEF.

Ms Rajah explained that this case and one more of HDB revoking the patent of an inventor about his clothes drying rack were the only 2 of such cases in the last 15 years.

She elaborated that in both cases, applications to revoke the patents had been made in the High Court as both cases had involved counter claims by the inventors. Both cases were approved by the high court and the inventors had their patents removed.

She said that the courts had made the ruling based on the individual patent’s novelty, innovation and industrial application.

Mr Giam also asked about the process of the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore and whether it granted patents for inventions which didn’t actually deserve them. To this, Ms Rajah just gave a general response saying that it is impossible for the patent office to check every single patent in the world and added that all patents are always open to challenges.

While this is true, generally, a patent is only awarded when the patent office finds that an invention applying for a patent is unique, innovative, or otherwise is new and worth patenting. If an invention does not fill the criteria, it will not be issued a patent so usually patented inventions have already been decided to be special.

The patent is supposed to protect inventors’ intellectual property so that they will be paid royalties or require permission to use their new invention. This is necessary to protect the interest of inventors as they may spend a lot of time and money on developing new technology but if others can copy that technology without paying them, they will have put in that time and money for nothing.

Without this recognition, businesses will not invest in Research and new technologies will not be created as much.

Despite this, the government was still able to revoke two patents of local inventors and get to use their inventions without having to pay them a single cent.

The first case was an inventor who had designed an innovative clothes drying rack for apartments. He presented the patented invention to HDB when they were calling for tenders only to find out that they later mass produced his design without actually awarding him a contract or paying any royalties.

When he disputed the use of the racks, HDB filed to have his patent revoked and the High court agreed with HDB.

More recently, MINDEF started producing a mobile health vehicle and claiming that they came up with the idea after having worked with Dr Ting who had developed a similar invention earlier.

Again when Dr Ting cried foul play, MINDEF applied to get his patent revoked and the High court agreed with MINDEF.

http://therealsingapore.com/content/...r-patents-2001


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