Parker David: Patents Bill — In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeParker David: Patents Bill — In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 27 August 2013. Volume:693;Page:12954. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): I will make a brief contribution to this part of the debate. I think as the Minister of Commerce and most in this Committee will understand patent rights involve a trade-off that is thought to be in society’s interests. If we enable the people who make discoveries and go to the trouble of investing in the research that leads to discoveries and we allow them a reward from their efforts then society is better off because people will go to the effort of making those discoveries. If there was no protection of the discoveries they make that have utility and if there was no protection for them for the economic benefits that flow from those discoveries they would not do the research in the first place and as a consequence society would be poorer for it. We would have fewer medicines and we would have fewer discoveries in engineering across society. We would be poorer in a wealth sense we would be in poorer health and we would have worse environmental outcomes were it not for those discoveries.This tension between the monopoly rights that you confer upon a patent holder to enable them to get the fruits of their labour rather than having them being ripped off by someone who has not put the time and investment into the discovery immediately upon that discovery becoming public is dealt with in a public policy sense by limiting both what it is that you can patent and the term of the monopoly right that flows from the patent. This legislation the Patents Bill attempts to do that.Where you stand on how broad patents should be or on how broad what should be able to be patented should be and the period for which patent protection should exist seems to depend in part from the point of view of some countries on what is in their economic interests. Countries that end up owning a disproportionate share of the world’s intellectual property rights as protected by patents seem to think that from an economic sovereignty point of view that justifies their trying to push the boundaries of what can be protected and how long it can be protected for. We see that and we perhaps will see that playing out in the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations that are under way. In respect of that I would suggest that even those who have lots of intellectual property should be hesitant to extend protections too far because it stymies innovation even in their own countries. If you extend patent rights too far—and I am coming to how this is relevant in respect of the definition of computer programs and of what can or cannot be programmed in respect of computer programs or indeed in respect of DNA code—you stop other people innovating.One of the concerns that the New Zealand computer industry has both in terms of patent law and copyright law is that the New Zealand Government will go too far in adopting what countries like the United States want to which the Australians actually agreed in their free-trade agreement with the Americans notwithstanding their Treasury advice that it came at significant economic cost to the Australian economy. If you go too far that way you actually block innovation in your own country because the computer programmers who might want to design or write a software solution—for example in medical technologies which New Zealand is very strong in—could be blocked from doing so because their freedom to operate is effectively prevented by the terms of patent law protecting prior inventions that have been allowed to be patented under patent law. So if you push it too far that is the consequence and then the societal outcome of that is that you actually have less innovation which runs in the opposite way of what the underlying intention of patent law is. This is the balance we are trying to strike.In my opinion we always need to be very wary about those who claim extensions to patent rights because their attempts to extend the terms of their monopoly rights is often motivated by their financial interests rather than by the societal need for more knowledge which should be what drives patent law. So it is with that somewhat longand complicated—necessarily so I think—description of what it is that underlies the principle we should be judging this amendment to insert proposed clause 10A as to whether it gets the balance right. As the Hon Lianne Dalziel has said it tries to say that where you have some computer software that is intrinsic to the working of a mechanical device then the fact that the mechanical device includes some software does not stop it being patented. Yes I agree with that. But if you go so far as to say that source code can be protected by way of patent—this is not copyright; this is patent—then you can go too far because you can block other people from innovating.Similarly in respect of some of the lines that we have to draw round DNA related - technologies there was a time in the United States when you could patent a string of DNA that had been decoded. There was no invention in that step. There was nothing that should have been patentable in there. It was essentially a list using a technology that might in itself have been patentable. The patentable technology that allows you to read the list might very well be properly patentable but the list that you read in DNA as a consequence and other DNA when you are reading that should not be patentable. That particular branch of the law was closed off even in the United States when it realised the folly of its way and cut back on patent rights.That is an example of why you need to be very careful about not extending the scope of patents in a way that does not meet the underlying purpose. The underlying purpose is to stimulate investment in the research and development that increases the sum of knowledge in society in a way that would not otherwise occur so justifying the time-limited monopoly rights that are conferred because as a society we are better off. I would like the Minister to explain on the basis of that principle how he has arrived at this amendment that he proposes to insert clause 10A in respect of computer programs.The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 237 in the name of the Hon Craig Foss to the proposed amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 120 in his name to Part 1 be agreed to.