01 May 2004	Saturday	10 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1425

ISLAMABAD, April 30: Pakistan stands nowhere on the innovative scene as characterized by a weak patent system, the Higher Education Commission chairman, Dr Attaur Rehman, said here on Friday.

Speaking at a seminar on 'Understanding Patentability Issues of Scientific Research' organized by PASTIC, he said it was pitiable that "we have no peer-review and things which cannot be patented anywhere in the world can be patented in Pakistan".

Appreciating the initiative of PASTIC, he stressed that such seminars were essential because these could help bring out the importance of public sector and its significant role in the encouragement of applied research, innovation and development in both public and private sectors.

While patents were awarded to encourage investment in technology and to reward the inventors, the HEC chairman remarked innovative activity in Pakistan was almost non-existent.

This situation needed to be improved through various promotional activities foremost among such endeavours being to create awareness, he added. In this regard, Dr Ata stressed the importance of development of human resources, infrastructure and identification of key thrust areas.

Inventions and patents, he continued, were means for technological progress. "Any product process is patentable such as new entities, chemicals, metals, treatment modalities, life forms, computer programmes etc., he added.

Elaborating on the shortcomings of the system in this country, he observed that Pakistani patents had poor peer reviews - a situation further complicated by low budget due to which high value research was lost.

Comparing the situation here with that of other countries, Dr Ata said Japan and Korea kept their inventions inside their countries, while most of the other countries gave their inventions out. In the US, half a million patents are filed each year and about $0.2 million granted for each.

In Pakistan, some of the key thrust areas had already been identified. Major challenge was to link all the research with industry, he added. In this connection, he asked the Pakistan Science Foundation to develop a peer review system for patenting that would comprise experts from different fields.