Resh­ma Ra­goonath

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan has made good on his promise to sue G-pan cre­ator, Prof Bri­an Copeland, for own­er­ship of the patent for the mod­i­fied ver­sion of the na­tion­al in­stru­ment, the per­cus­sive har­mon­ic in­stru­ment (PHI) pan. On Fri­day af­ter­noon the AG, through at­tor­neys at the chief so­lic­i­tor's of­fice, filed a civ­il in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights claim in the Hall of Jus­tice, Port-of-Spain. The claim, a copy of which the T&T Guardian ob­tained has named Copeland, Mar­cel By­ron and Kei­th May­nard as de­fen­dants. In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Ram­lo­gan con­firmed that the claim was filed. It is the first such ac­tion to be filed by the State.

Ram­lo­gan said the claim was filed on the ad­vice of the high-pow­ered le­gal team led by QC Vin­cent Nel­son and com­pris­ing of at­tor­neys De­vesh Ma­haraj and Daniel Solomon. Ram­lo­gan said the le­gal ac­tion was nec­es­sary since, "I would be act­ing in dere­lic­tion of my du­ty as guardian of the pub­lic in­ter­est, if, in the face of such ad­vice, I failed to take ac­tion, af­ter the coun­try in­vest­ed al­most $50m in the de­vel­op­ment of our na­tion­al in­stru­ment on this spe­cial project." The ac­tion seeks a re­vo­ca­tion of the grant for the patent reg­is­tered to Copeland and oth­ers. The AG is seek­ing for a de­c­la­ra­tion from the court that Copeland and oth­er as­signees hold the patent as "trustees" on be­half of the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go and "the same ought to be as­signed forth­with to the (Gov­ern­ment) or its nom­i­nee."

It is al­so seek­ing that Copeland, By­ron and May­nard dis­close all agree­ments en­tered in­to by them with any in­di­vid­ual, part­ner­ship or com­pa­ny, where­by they were grant­ed any rights in re­spect of the in­ven­tion of the PHI pan. The claim is al­so seek­ing the dis­clo­sure of all reg­is­tra­tions, by each de­fen­dant of patent rights in any ju­ris­dic­tions through­out the world, the iden­ti­ty of the per­son or per­sons in whose name "the in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights, in­clud­ing patent rights, of the PHI have been reg­is­tered and/or record­ed." The State is al­so ask­ing for an ac­count of all rev­enue, with sup­port­ing ev­i­dence, that have been "ob­tained from the use and ex­ploita­tion of the PHI to date, whether through the de­fen­dants of Panadigm In­no­va­tions Ltd."

The State is al­so seek­ing an or­der that the de­fen­dants stop rep­re­sent­ing them­selves as own­ers of the PHI. Ram­lo­gan said: "This claim was nec­es­sary to pro­tect the in­ter­ests of Trinidad and To­ba­go and con­firm our own­er­ship of the in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights in these new ver­sions of the pan, which was not de­vel­oped by any one per­son but, as re­sult of the col­lec­tive ef­forts of dozens of uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents, UWI staff mem­bers and mem­bers of the steel­pan fra­ter­ni­ty." Ac­cord­ing to the state­ment of claim, the de­fen­dants were is­sued patent num­ber TT/A/2009/00080 claim­ing rights for the in­ven­tion of the PHI which "pro­vides the look and feel of the fourths and fifths tenor steel pan, but is func­tion­al in a class of in­stru­ments known as Mu­si­cal In­stru­ment Dig­i­tal In­ter­face (MI­DI.)

On April 24, 2009 the de­fen­dants ap­plied for and were grant­ed the patent and "with­out law­ful au­thor­i­ty made" By­ron and May­nard joint own­ers. Phillip Ear­le was al­so added to the patent of own­er­ship. Ear­le's name is to be added to the claim. Ac­cord­ing to the claim the Gov­ern­ment fund­ed the project for the PHI and on Oc­to­ber 26, 2005, dur­ing a meet­ing of the Steel­pan Ini­tia­tives Com­mit­tee, which in­clud­ed Copeland and for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, it was agreed that the award of the patent would be in the Gov­ern­ment's name.