Bond RiaRIA BOND (NZ First): I am pleased to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to the third reading of the Patents (Trans-Tasman Patent Attorneys and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I want to point out to members in the House this afternoon that New Zealand First in the first reading of this bill did support this bill to ensure that the bill went through the select committee process.At the time this bill seemed quite like it was a straightforward bill that it had all the answers to fix all the outdated problems to do with the patents sector and that it was going to help alleviate the issues that the 2013 Patents Act had actually come up with. We also noted that the bill did have poor drafting and that kind of alerted us to the fact that yes there was a comprehensive relook and redrafting of the Patents Act 2013 and that took effect on 13 September 2014. We knew that that had been a mammoth task and that it seemed that the Act had been spun on its head with the sweeping and massive changes. Our concern was that we were here again not 2 years but 18 months later looking at the unintended consequences that those changes at the time to that Act actually made to the sectors and industries.So that is why we did support the bill to the select committee and I have to say—as other members in the House have said today in the Committee stage and the second and first readings—we are pleased that this process did in fact occur. What this bill sought was to amend the Patents Act 2013 and a large part of those originally proposed amendments was an amalgamation process of a single patent application process known as SAP and a single patent examination process known as SEP so that there was finally a trans-Tasman regulatory regime for patent attorneys.But throughout the select committee process this bill sadly fell apart. It actually haemorrhaged. One of the reasons was that a policy decision was taken to produce a parallel system to that being undertaken globally without the due diligence required. The biggest problem the Commerce Committee became faced with was getting solid evidence out of our advisers and our officials who had been assigned to us. We pressed our advisers to provide members with a cost-benefit analysis that could demonstrate the actual value of the pilot programme—supported by Minister Goldsmith in this bill—that we knew as the SEP and the SAP.We asked the Minister not once not twice but actually six times to reconsider this bill and to pull this bill and actually go back over and make this bill fit for purpose so that good legislation was being passed in this House—not legislation that was wasting members' time—but that fell on deaf ears. It was quite sad that that fell on deaf ears because the other major problem was that there was no pre-consultation with either New Zealand innovation businesses or the patent attorneys on the need for the SEP and SAP system before the legislation was in fact drafted.We did hear from 20 submitters which included two supplementary submissions and we heard six oral submitters. From this the committee had absolute and overwhelming opposition from the patent attorneys and submitters to the SEP and the SAP system. We also had major criticisms of the implementing of a single trans-Tasman registration regime for Australia and New Zealand patent attorneys. Despite this high-level criticism and this absolute concern and the feeling that there was ignorance and arrogance involved when this bill was being drafted this area was still saved in the bill and we are debating that in the third reading today.Again this did highlight the fact that the Minister's advisers had not taken a pre-consultation or in fact any type of thorough consultation at all with the patent attorneys or innovators and the industry itself got consulted with only through the select committee process when it could be heard. I want to point out that not only was that bad behaviour from the advisers but it was also really poor practice that we would actually have to witness this. I questioned at the time the issue—it was glaringly obvious that an adviser had a personal interest in this bill. The advisers actually were of high concern and—I am sure other members will say this—when pressed and pressed we just got no solid evidence at all back from them. We did as a committee look at some secret papers that we are not allowed to talk to and I will not do that but it is hard because those papers alluded to the fact that this bill was not fit for the House.So the situation still remains the same—that New Zealand First believes that this is a poor bill. Although it has the amendments brought to the House in there it still has issues with the industry itself coming back and telling us that this is actually going to diminish the very industry that this bill seeks to protect. We have also heard from previous debates in the House that the origins of the joint regulations are pretty murky and that the SAP and the SEP were a pilot programme that was part of the single economic market an initiative announced after a prime ministerial meeting between John Key and Kevin Rudd in August 2009. This joint registration is almost like: Good luck to the last man standing." and to date the committee and members are still faced with the mystery of how the Government actually got to that single signal of how this would transpose and be good and it does remain a mystery today.The merits of a joint regulation and stand-alone New Zealand regime is still faced with the multi-faceted innovation market and patent attorneys that service it and if you would permit Mr Assistant Speaker I would like to quote from an article that was written by Doug Calhoun. What he says is that "The regulatory impact statement cost-benefit analysis table compares existing regulatory fees with the fees under joint regulation making the unlikely assumption that joint regulation fees remain the same as the current Australian fees. The listed cost regulatory fees are taken out of context. Regulatory fees make up only a minute percentage of the costs of patent attorney services to businesses. The list of costs also does not include the extra costs that will be imposed on New Zealand patent attorneys who would need to take Australia's qualifying examination in order to become registered. They do not include the administrative and travel costs of expanding the Australian regime into a trans-Tasman regime. Too much has been left out."Finally what was pretty much a straightforward—in this bill is the proposal to correct an unintended consequence which is to amend the grounds on which a person can oppose a granting of a patent under the Patents Act 2013. This is a correction of a drafting error in the Act and in order for that Act to meet its original policy this anomaly needs to be corrected. However I want to say that the New Zealand Law Society printed an article that said that the proposal to retrospectively bring in regulations for old patent applications "would be unfair for all businesses that made patent applications under the previous law." and would disadvantage affected businesses.This also highlights the concern about imposing time limits on divisional applications and the time limits set by the new legislation will be highly controversial. Although the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand (IPONZ) recommended them to be filed within 5 years of the original patent applications filing date IPONZ has now recommended implementing a 5-year time limit to applications filed under the previous law the Patents Act 1953. So it is apparent that this is a legislative clean-up job and what New Zealand First does encourage is that businesses that find the divisional deadline a gridlock should challenge IPONZ on the basis of how IPONZ says it will apply the time limit.In closing New Zealand First is absolutely not in favour of supporting bad legislation and this bill is no different. Amendments have been proposed to the Patents (Trans-Tasman Patent Attorneys and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. However this does still not justify the fact that the Government has been forced to do a full turn-around on the bill's original purpose and does not protect the profession itself. Thank you."