With all of the new oil discoveries in Guyana, many have asked about patenting in Guyana.?Here are a few facts about patents in Guyana.
- Guyana joined the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in late 1994.?As a WIPO member, Guyana is a signatory to the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property and the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works.?Guyana is committed to accede to other treaties administered by WIPO according to the CARIFORUM-EU EPA.?Guyana is not a signatory to the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT); therefore, you cannot file a national phase PCT application in Guyana.?Further, Guyana’s IP laws have not been amended to fully conform to the requirements of the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement.
- Guyana lacks a comprehensive and updated intellectual property rights framework. Upon independence in 1966, Guyana adopted British law on intellectual property rights (IPR). Numerous attempts to draft a comprehensive update to the 1956 Copyright Act and 1973 Trademark, and Patents and Design Acts have been unsuccessful. Several laws have made piecemeal amendments to offer additional protection to local companies such as the 2005 Geographic Indication Act and the 2006 Competition and Fair Trading Act. No modern legislation exists to protect the intellectual property rights of foreign-registered investors.?[1]
- Patents can be registered in Guyana pursuant to the Patents and Designs Act, which provides for both national patent applications and applications to extend the rights under a United Kingdom (UK) or European Patent (EP) within 3 years of registration in the UK.?It usually takes about three years for the Registrar of Deeds at The Deeds Registry in the Ministry of Legal Affairs to process a national application for registration. A UK or EP (UK) based application usually takes about six months to be processed. Paris Convention priority cannot be claimed. Once the registration is complete The Deeds Registry will issue a Certificate of Registration.?A national patent registration is valid for 16 years and may be extended for another 5 or 10 years in certain circumstances. A UK or EP (UK) based patent registration is valid for the same period as specified on the underlying UK or EP?(UK) registration on which it is based. An opposition against a patent application can be raised at the pre-grant stage within two (02) months approximately following its publication. [2]
- Even with a completed registration, “no effective enforcement mechanisms exist to protect intellectual property rights” in Guyana per the U.S. International Trade Administration.?[3] Thus, patent and trademark infringement continues to be commonplace in the country.?Id.
- Per WIPO statistics?[4] for the period of 2012 to 2018, the number of patent applications pending in Guyana is less than 25 total including resident and non-resident applicants.?The number of granted patents is similarly small with a max of 21 being granted to non-residents in 2017.?As of 2016, only 29 patents in total were in force in Guyana.
- The Act also provides for the registration of United Kingdom industrial designs in Guyana.?An industrial design registration in Guyana lasts fifteen (15) years from the date of application, which may be extendable. [5]
- How far patent coverage extends off of the shore of Guyana is an interesting and unresolved question.?Generally, countries with shorelines (coastal states) can claim all sovereign rights, including the establishment of patent rights, in territorial waters extending 12 nautical miles (22 kilometers or 14 miles) from a baseline measured at low tide. This limit was specified in the United Nations Convention of Law of the Sea of 1982 (the Convention). Within 12 nautical miles of the baseline, the coastal state is free to set laws, regulate use and use any resource.?Beyond the initial 12 nautical mile limit, there is a zone, comprising a further 12 nautical miles from the limit of the territorial waters, known as the contiguous zone. In the contiguous zone, a state can continue to enforce laws in four specific areas: customs, taxation, immigration and pollution.?The next zone is the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).?Guyana’s EEZ is the area beyond and adjacent to the territorial sea and bounded on its seaward side by the line every point of which is two hundred miles from the nearest point of the baseline of the territorial sea.?[6] Whether patent infringement can occur in a country’s EEZ is less clear, and countries have dealt with this in different ways.?Guyana’s courts do not appear to have addressed this question at this time.
- Interestingly, Section 28 of the Patent Act allows compulsory licenses to be issued if monopoly rights have been abused or for emergency state purposes, i.e., in case of war.?Compulsory licenses may also be granted if a government agency was using a patented good before the patent was granted.
Article by Carey Jordan, Partner and Chair of the Technology and Intellectual Property Group
