Australia mulls abolition of ‘innovative patent system’
An Australian parliamentary committee has recommended that the country’s innovative patent system (IPS) be abolished.
The IPS is an alternative patent which provides “fast protection” and lasts up to eight years from the filing date of the application.
To qualify for an innovative patent, the applicant must demonstrate an “innovative step”, which means proving that the “invention is different from what is known before and the difference makes a substantial contribution to the working of the invention”.
This is a lower bar than the “inventive step” required by a standard patent.
In 2016, the Australian government’s Productivity Commission said that Australia had “lost its way on IP policy”, and was allowing for the “proliferation of low-quality patents”.
Among its recommendations was the abolition of the IPS altogether.
On Wednesday, September 4, the Australian Senate committee on economics legislation published its report on a proposed bill which would see that recommendation implemented.
The policy shift has been on the cards for some time. A 2015 report from IP Australia, the country’s IP office, concluded that the “IPS fails to encourage research and development that would not have otherwise occurred, and is unlikely to provide net benefits to the community”.
Small and medium-sized enterprise (SMEs) representatives had argued that the IPS was of value for SMEs in protecting their IP.
Acknowledging that a “small number” of SMEs utilise the IPS, the committee recommended that IP Australia mitigate its abolition by developing a “targeted program to educate and assist SMEs in adopting diversified approaches to protecting their IP”.
Overseas concerns
The reforms come as the Australian government says it is looking to stamp out foreign interference in its universities, which it says poses a risk to its IP protection.
Last week, education minister Dan Tehan announced the establishment of a task force which would examine foreign interference in Australian universities aimed at, among other issues, stealing Australian IP.
The government is currently investigating the influence of the Confucius Institutes in Australian universities. These institutions are Chinese cultural centres run by the Chinese ministry of education.
Last month, the province of New South Wales suspended a Chinese language program carried out in conjunction with the Confucius Institute.
The province’s education department had published a report which cited concern over the Institute’s “political influence”, but said it did not find “any evidence of actual political influence being exercised”.
Tehan’s fellow Liberal Party parliamentarian, and chair of Australia’s parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security, Dan Hastie, attracted strong condemnation from China last month when he compared the country’s growing influence to Nazi Germany’s conquest of France.
In a newspaper column, Hastie said that “like the French, Australia has failed to see how mobile our authoritarian neighbour has become”.
The Chinese embassy in Australia said that it “strongly deplores” Hastie’s comments.
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