Patents maintenance fee brought forward

The Opposition has said it will vote against a Bill amending the Patents and Designs Act because it sends the wrong message on government induced costs.

The Bill adjusts the maintenance fee due by patent holders so that it would be due from the third year from the filing date of the patent application instead from the fifth year, as currently provided.

Charles Mangion, opposition spokesman on finance, said it was wrong to promise that the tax burden would not be increased and then to raise government induced costs on sectors which had a potential to develop.

For this reason, the Opposition would vote against the amendment as it was sending a negative message.

Dr Mangion also spoke about the general economic situation, insisting that the government needed to give top priority to job creation and stimulating economic growth.

Measures taken so far, such as the removal of public holidays falling on weekends, had not been effective, and the situation was made worse by rising costs, including the new eco-tax and higher VAT and fuel costs. Export orders had dropped and GDP growth in the second quarter was only a result of inventories. The government should address the problem of competitiveness rather than reducing the deficit to under three per cent in 2006 in order to be able to join the Eurozone in 2007/8.

At the opening of the debate, Competitiveness Minister Censu Galea said the bill was intended to correct a mistake in the principal act and reduce the time when the patent maintenance fee became due.

He underlined the importance of the registration of patents and for intellectual property rights to be protected.

Legal rights that had been developed over the years were meant to serve as encouragement to potential inventors and give peace of mind that their efforts would not be unfairly exploited once they were announced and put into production. While the rights meant protection, the most widespread usage of the invention constituted the reward for those efforts. Such rights were parallel to authors' copyright.

Mr Galea said Malta was working closely with the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) and the European Patent Organisation with regard to legislation and the training of personnel.

Current patent legislation in Malta was updated in 2000 and had brought Malta into line with modern intellectual property rights. Still, there were many developments in the past five years and legislative amendments would be presented to the House next year. Malta also intended to ratify the Madrid Agreement for the Registration of Trade Marks, which would mean that the registration of one patent or trade mark would automatically make such registration valid in 67 countries that were currently members of WIPO.

Another possibility being considered was Maltese membership of the European Patent Convention to ensure that registration in Malta would entail similar registration on a much wider scale.

Parliamentary Secretary Edwin Vassallo said the opposition was misunderstanding the legislation if it saw it as a bill through which the government would be further burdening the local commercial sector with taxes. The real reason behind the amendment was for multinational companies which register patents in Malta but did not operate from here to pay the Lm75 registration fee from the third year of registration and not from the fifth.

Malta was the only country where the registration fee was paid from the fifth year when everyone else charged it from the third year. This measure would not place any multinational company at a disadvantage and the government would only be getting minimal additional revenue.