The government’s revenue earnings from patents, designs and trademarks remained almost static in the last calendar year despite marked expansion in socio-economic areas. Insiders, however, have attributed it to apathy of the business community and inventors over intellectual property rights (IPR) issue saying that this tendency might lead foreign entities to grab patent rights of the products the country owns. Revenue income from trademarks, patents and designs stood at Tk109.9 million in 2014 which was almost the same at Tk109.88 million in 2013, according to the data of the Department of Patents, Designs and Trademarks (DPDT). The DPDT’s income from trademarks was nearly Tk95 million while earnings from patents and designs stood at only Tk15 million in the last calendar year. Registrar of the department Md Sanowar Hossain told the FE that business people were interested mostly in trademarks. He said revenue earnings from issuance of trademarks stood at Tk69 million in 2010, which is now more than Tk95 million. But earnings from patent and design registration increased by only Tk2.0 million in last five years. Businesses and scientists are not much interested in patenting their products, he said. He said IPR is still not recognised among majority of businessmen. He said foreign entities are more interested in patenting than that of the locals. “In 2014, we received 249 applications from foreigners for patent registration against only 44 from local ones,” he said. “But in the case of trademarks, Bangladeshis are ahead– DPDT received 7,930 applications from the locals while the number was 3,611 from foreign trade bodies and individuals,” he said. Mr Hossain also pointed out that as a least developed country (LDCs), Bangladesh has a waiver over IPR on certain products or things which are also responsible for poor growth in revenue from patents. Director General of Intellectual Property Association of Bangladesh (IPAB) Md Azizur Rahman told the FE that creation, protection and management of intellectual property (IP) is now an instrument for national development in the context of globalisation of trade and commerce and knowledge world. “We have no specific research as to how much IP contributes to our economy,” he said. He said the country has been witnessing a sizeable economic expansion for a decade. But revenue income from trademarks, designs and patents is not satisfactory compared to that of the growing size of the economy. He said as a LDC country, our industries are not bound by IPR on specific products for a certain period, but we have to think about it when waiver over IPR goes. Our businesses, scientists, inventors, musicians will have to be cautious over patents from now as foreign entities might claim ownership of our products if the latter patent those earlier, he said. He also said there must be effective coordination between DPDT and National Board of Revenue (NBR) so that information relating to registration could be obtained easily. There must also be effective co-ordination among ministries of commerce, industries, home affairs, law and law-enforcement agencies over IPR issue.
