Webb Duncan; Williams PotoPATENTS (ADVANCEMENT PATENTS) AMENDMENT BILLFirst ReadingDebate resumed from 25 July.Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. I congratulate the member for having this bill drawn. Unfortunately it's not a bill that we're going to support on this side of the House and I think to justify that position—and I accept that it's a position that must be justified because at first blush this might look a good idea—we need to go back and understand really what patents are all about.What patents do is they lock up knowledge. They are in effect a statutory monopoly so real caution is required before we extend the ability—before we extend the State endorsement—of prohibiting others from using what are by definition good ideas. Now patents and monopolies have been around for a long time—since the 1400s in fact—and for a long time they were used quite inappropriately really as a revenue-gathering means. But the balance to be struck when we're looking at extending patent law is a balance between the free use of intellectual property the ability of people to take the normal arts that are used in manufacture in producing food and in embarking upon all kinds of endeavour and rewarding people for good ideas so that they can in fact be incentivised to embark upon that.Now under the current law—and I must say the current law has been centuries in the making—we have a very clear step and that is the inventiveness step. This mustn't be something which is obvious. If we are going to give someone the absolute dominion over this idea they have to show that it is a flash of genius—something that doesn't leap immediately to mind but is a real and significant furtherance of knowledge; a really new way to do things.Now what we have proposed by the member is an advancement step and by definition—in fact in her bill she sets out and points out that—this is less than an invention step. I must say even on a mechanical basis I struggle to see exactly how that would work and we know for a fact that it's failed elsewhere.One of the real problems that has occurred is that if we extend this ability to too low a threshold it simply means that silly ideas—in fact there was an invention in Australia of a pizza box that could be used as a bib. Now handy as it might be it's not something we need a patent for. We don't want people locking up ideas and shutting people out. Interestingly this is used in Australia not by small businesses to innovate but by large businesses to appropriate knowledge to themselves and shut out small players and that's not what we need in New Zealand.We think that the current law strikes an excellent balance—an excellent balance between a relatively significant inventiveness threshold and a good reward for those that cross it. What we don't want is a quick and dirty system where anyone with half an idea can lock that idea down and exclude others from it. That would actually cut across the kind of innovation the kind of inventiveness that we need in our economy today.So look whilst I absolutely commend any idea which encourages small businesses which looks to encourage new ideas we've got to be very cautious indeed before we have a framework which allows others to exclude knowledge. So yes patents are necessary—we're always here to look at these ideas. The National Party did have an opportunity to do this in the last term when they in fact reviewed the Patents Act but they clearly didn't think that this was a good idea.So to the member I commend you for having this bill drawn. I commend you for your hard work on it—I know you've done a lot of hard work—but we don't see this as good policy for New Zealand and we won't support it. Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I call Parmjeet Parmar—five minutes in reply.