Bayly Andrew: Patents (Trans-Tasman Patent Attorneys and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBayly Andrew: Patents (Trans-Tasman Patent Attorneys and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 09 February 2016. Volume:711;Page:8819. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): It is a pleasure to be here and I hope you have had a good break. It is great to be talking on this bill tonight on the first day of Parliament for 2016. It is particularly great to be talking on this bill the Patents (Trans-Tasman Patent Attorneys and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. Although this bill seems confined to the extent of what it is seeking to address I put it to you that this bill is actually crucial for New Zealand not particularly around the exact provisions in this bill but what it means for New Zealand. In essence intellectual property is really a pre-eminent source of competitive advantage in today’s knowledge economy. For New Zealand to grow in the international sector how we protect intellectual property how we promote intellectual property and how we assist people to want to undertake that innovative process and go through a patent process is absolutely crucial if we are to continue to be successful as a nation.Traditionally bankers and financiers have always looked at the balance sheets of companies and looked at the fixed assets. It was interesting that my colleague Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi was talking about the chartered accountants—and of course there are a lot of rules around how you value fixed assets. More recently probably over the last 10 years to 15 years there has been a migration to also valuing brands. But now intellectual property is so crucial to driving future wealth that the need to focus on that part of the balance sheet is really really important. It is staggering. If you start to think about all the Crown research institutes that the Government has an involvement in and all the intellectual property that resides within the Government itself and all its activities let alone the commercial sector it is a huge value that is often unrecognised and probably not properly valued in the sense that it is not exploited and utilised as well as it should be.The key issue with intellectual property is that it is very very difficult first of all to define what is new and unique when you go to patent a product—that situation—and certainly to actually undertake the search which often has to be a worldwide search to make sure there is no competing intellectual property that may be related but it is quite difficult to understand whether it is valid or not. The second thing is actually the process of registering a patent. If any of you have been involved in it you will know that it is a multiple-step process taking many years to complete. If you are successful in actually getting the intellectual property which is not always the case there is an ongoing monitoring and management process that is difficult and expensive. So anything that we are doing to actually enhance or reduce that cost is removing some of the barriers to helping our vibrant innovators in New Zealand to actually get under way and do some of this good work. When you think about the dynamic parts of our economy we should be doing all of this.So I have got to say I highly recommend this bill. I think it is insightful. I think it is a great step towards improving New Zealand’s economic situation. Thank you very much.