Growing pains at Brunei’s IP office

The concept of an office or body that awards an intellectual property right dates back hundreds of years. The UK has been granting patents since the 15th century, with trademarks following three centuries later. The US issued its first patent in 1790.

But in the tiny South Pacific nation of Brunei, the concept of IP is an altogether newer one. Its first dedicated IP laws were not enacted until the 1950s, and the Brunei Intellectual Property Office (BruIPO) was established in 2012.

Brunei’s population, at a fraction over 400,000 (compare that to the 609,052 patent applications filed in the US in 2013), and its size of just under 6,000 km2, make the country a mere baby when compared with the rest of the globe.

However, the nation’s new foray into the world of IP is not just about awarding patents and trademarks. The office is also keen to educate locals on the importance of the age-old concept of IP and the potential benefits it can bring.

Shahrinah Yusof Khan, BruIPO’s director general, spoke about the “numerous” awareness campaigns that the office is involved in.

“Our public awareness campaigns have been quite extensive since our inception. In 2013 we ran an awareness campaign for schools—we visited more than 25 schools to give them talks on IP,” she says.

The talks that year coincided with World IP Day, on April 26. In 2014, on the same day, the office ran a similar campaign, this time visiting government offices and organisations.

Khan adds: “In our public awareness efforts we also try to play our part in celebrating World IP Day. Over the past two years we have run some competitions where we invite participants to create a short animated video clip that promotes IP rights.”

As well as its efforts to raise awareness about IP, the office is also dealing with a lot of teething problems that come with setting up a new organisation.

“With BruIPO being a relatively new office, we face many of the growing pains that any new organisation would encounter. We are still trying to find our way on many fronts,” she explains.

One of these issues is establishing the workflow for office actions and ensuring that every person in the team knows their role. As director general, Khan answers to the office’s chief executive, Abdul Manaf Metussin, who acts as chief registrar. Responsibilities for trademarks and patents are then split between two assistant registrars and nine formalities assistants.

In keeping with its focus on communicating and raising awareness about IP, the office also has an in-house public relations officer. IT staff, and administration and finance assistants make up the rest of the team.

“To establish new work processes from scratch can be quite a daunting task, and ironing out the wrinkles that you may have in these processes can also take some time and effort,” Khan explains.

Added services

Traditionally seen as a major oil exporter, Brunei is expanding its reach and, according to Khan, the BruIPO can play a major role as the office looks to increase the number of services it offers, which could help the country export more products.

As it stands, BruIPO is responsible for administering patents, industrial designs and trademarks. But, as Khan explains, the office hopes to expand its remit to include managing plant variety protection (PVP) applications in the near future.

PVPs—for which the country’s government is currently drawing up laws—would work in a similar way to patents, providing plant breeders with a period of exclusivity on new varieties of plants they discover.

“The need for a PVP system came about quite recently, with Brunei currently producing new varieties of rice that we hope to commercialise and with many of these varieties being developed by our local Department of Agriculture,” Khan says. “It was decided that it would be best for BruIPO to administer the PVP registry.”

Aside from its intention to implement a PVP system for rice varieties, the government could seek to introduce geographical indications (GIs) to protect the country’s own home-grown products. The GI method of protection has proved to be important for renowned location-based products such as Scotch Whisky (Scotland), Champagne (France) and Parma ham (Italy).

As it stands, BruIPO provides local protection of Bruneian products through its trademark system. Certification or collective marks both verify that products contain certain characteristics, but the country has not yet considered implementing a system for GIs.

This, according to Khan, is because although there are a number of home-grown products that the country likes to think of as uniquely ‘Bruneian’, questions remain about whether they have economic and export potential.

“We have a number of local food and textile products that have a good reputation locally and regionally but perhaps we would need to determine the demand for these products more accurately before determining whether they would benefit from GI protection,” Khan explains.

She mentions the jong sarat, a hand-woven textile that has a “good reputation regionally” as one of the nation’s best-known products.