Adams Amy: Patents Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeAdams Amy: Patents Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 05 May 2009. Volume:654;Page:2892. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn):I rise to take the final call on this first reading of the Patents Bill. Taking the final call late at night is always such a privilege and such a pleasure and tonight more so than ever because certainly the intensity in the House around this bill is something to behold.This is a bill that is long overdue and it is a bill that has been welcomed not just by the majority of this House but the majority of the “pat-ent” industry or let me say the “pay-tent” industry because having gone through law school “pat-ents” are what they have in America and “pay-tents” are what we have here. They were always “pay-tents” where I went to school. So it is a bill that is being welcomed by the majority of the patent community and that is amongst both patent attorneys and applicants and patent holders. Interestingly enough that is so even though the bill will make the patents regime tougher; it will make patents harder to get. I think the reason that the industry is supporting it none the less is that it recognises that despite those challenges the bill will give us a far more appropriate patent regime.What I would like to do tonight is just begin by taking somewhat of a helicopter view and just consider—Hon Members: Oh oh!AMY ADAMS: Members opposite are awake! That worked; that was easy. I thought one had to say something really contentious to get them going but that was really easy like taking candy from a baby.Let us consider some of the wider aspects of intellectual property which patent law forms a part of. Broadly speaking intellectual property is any output of the human mind—even those from Labour—but law has over time defined clear rules as to which parts of intellectual property can be capable of legal protection and ownership. Certainly the best well-known of these are copyright patents registered designs and trademarks. What has always however been outside intellectual property is the ability to protect ideas. Instead it is the tangible expression or application of ideas that the law protects. That is a slightly technical and legal distinction but an important one.It is often said that it is and will be the quality of the intellectual property of a nation and what it possesses that will determine its economic prosperity. Certainly that is a true statement but I would add that the quality and usability of that country’s laws around protecting intellectual property are equally vital. If we do not get those laws right then two things are likely to happen. Firstly individuals and businesses will not be motivated to create intellectual property; it is a straight economic assessment. Secondly we can be sure that if the rules are not right the intellectual property that is created is likely to be lost by this country. It is likely to be lost by those who created it—quite possibly lost to overseas competitors who will exploit it and ensure that the money to be made works for the benefit of their economies rather than ours as it should. So in this period when we are all right across the House I would hope so very aware of the need to protect preserve and grow our economic base so aware that our ability as a country to provide all the wonderful services and support to our citizens that we would like to be able to provide depends on that economic base and so conscious that if we are to raise the standard of living of the average New Zealander we must lift productivity surely now more than ever we can understand why we must have laws that ensure our protection of intellectual property is robust sensible and in line with other major overseas nations. If I can just come back to the points made by Ms Curran earlier rather than saying it is unnecessary at this time I would have thought that anyone who understands economic growth knows we have to get the underlying conditions right if we are going to have a strong economy. This bill goes towards doing that.In New Zealand particularly we have a strong and proud heritage of ground-breaking novel often niche-technology solutions and inventions as we use our world-famous No. 8 wire mentality to get things done which Ms Shanks spoke about earlier. Consider for a moment Burt Munro’s modified Indian bike which set unheard-of land-speed records on the salt flats of America. Think of Richard Pearse’s aeroplanes from 1906 and John Britten’s motorcycle from Christchurch which destroyed competing bikes from all the major production companies in the world at Daytona. Think about the Anzacs’ self-firing guns developed on the beaches of Gallipoli when the men were under the most fearsome of attacks—Hon Kate Wilkinson: The Hamilton jet.AMY ADAMS: That was the next one on my list. I thank the Minister! Think of the Hamilton jet and the work being done at Weta Workshop—the list goes on and on. In fact it brings to mind the opening of the New Zealand ICT Innovation Institute at Canterbury University—the leading institution of its kind in this country. We opened it with the Prime Minister just recently. The opening highlighted much of the wonderful innovation and technology that this country can offer the world. If we do not get the conditions and the law right such innovation will never take off. The business community will drive it but our job is to get the law right and we are going to get that done.With this country’s heritage and with the skills we have amongst our small population we have to get our intellectual property laws right. But I just point out for a moment—and it is a point worth making—that intellectual property is not just about the whiz-bang gadgets and it is not just about the high-tech world. Certainly patents and quite successful patents can relate to all sorts of simple inventions. I knew a client who was working on a patent for a revolutionary way to hang pictures. Now it might not be world record breaking stuff—it did not involve technology it was effectively the way he designed a little bit of metal—but let me tell members something: it did something that had never been done before. It provided a solution to a common problem and that client created a huge potential industry. We also remember the wonderful days of the spork—the spoon-fork which was famously patented and made the inventors rather a lot of money. So innovation is not all about high-tech whiz-bang gadgetry but certainly that is a proud part of it.We know that patents form valuable business assets and they can be traded like any other property right. In fact a number of people are in the business of simply creating and registering the patents and trading them with no intention to actually commercialise the product themselves. That is perfectly valid. As we have heard on numerous occasions already this evening these have been around since the time of Queen Elizabeth I. The English Statute of Monopolies 1623 gave the “true and first inventor” of a “manner of new manufactures” the right to use that invention to the exclusion of others. As we have heard rather often this evening the New Zealand system was adopted from the English 1949 legislation and turned into our own Patents Act 1953 which remains largely unchanged to this day. That is the case even though the English updated their 1949 Act in 1977. We have failed to do that in New Zealand. It is long overdue and I am certainly pleased to see it happening now.Patents as we have heard give protected monopolies for up to 20 years. The price that the inventor pays for that is that in return for that period of undisturbed use the inventor must fully disclose how the invention is made. That is a bargain that societies have been making for hundreds of years. In return for the monopoly with which to commercialise the invention the applicant shares his or her new knowledge with the world thereby growing the knowledge base of the entire population so that after a period of monopoly everyone can benefit. The area that we are probably most familiar with is medicines where we have all become familiar with seeing a generic brand of medicine coming on to the market when the name-brand product’s patent expires. The drug companies have had a period in which to make a fair return on their investment but the net result is that after they have done so their knowledge is widely shared and society gets cheaper medicine as a result.This bill certainly keeps a number of the main structures that we have in our patent system—the examination by the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand of prior art the grant of patent rights by the Commissioner of Patents the renewals at 4 7 10 and 13 years and the ability to make one application under the Patent Cooperation Treaty that covers protection in a number of countries. But there are important changes that this bill will bring in and I think the most important of those is that we are changing the current local novelty standard and replacing it with an absolute novelty standard. That means that if the application or the invention has been disclosed anywhere in the world patent protection will not be available. I would have thought that that was a reasonably obvious thing. Most countries already have that standard. New Zealand was out of step and this bill will certainly go towards addressing that matter. The grounds of inventiveness and utility are also going to be added along with the novelty ground once again bringing New Zealand back into line with most of our major trading partners.We have heard how the bill specifically excludes diagnostic therapeutic and surgical methods from patent ability as it does plant varieties which of course have their own protective legislation. Other major changes involve the commissioner being able to refuse a patent on the grounds that the invention is obvious to persons skilled in the art. Previously it was permitted for a private person only to object to the grant of a patent on this ground. Now the commissioner can do it of his own merit. This is a bill that needed to be introduced. I commend the Minister for bringing it to the House.