Dr Kris Ram­per­sad

The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies has ex­pressed con­cern over a patent dis­pute be­tween the dean of its fac­ul­ty of en­gi­neer­ing, Bri­an Copeland, and the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go.Re­search Caribbean has learnt that ad­min­is­tra­tors at oth­er re­gion­al re­search in­sti­tu­tions are al­so re-ex­am­in­ing their In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty (IP) poli­cies and mon­i­tor­ing the de­vel­op­ments close­ly be­cause of its im­pli­ca­tions for re­search fund­ing and their re­la­tion­ship with re­searchers.The Trinidad and To­ba­go Gov­ern­ment this month be­gan a le­gal process aimed at es­tab­lish­ing own­er­ship of two patents of elec­tron­ic steel­band in­stru­ments reg­is­tered in Copeland's name.At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, who is him­self a UWI law grad­u­ate, claimed that the two prod­ucts are the out­come of state-fund­ed re­search, that their patents be­long to the State, and that the UWI IP pol­i­cy process was by­passed in pro­cess­ing the patents.The Gov­ern­ment in­vest­ed some $35 mil­lion in the Steel­pan Ini­tia­tive Project (SIP) at the UWI Steel­pan Re­search Lab­o­ra­to­ry housed in the fac­ul­ty head­ed by Copeland.The Gen­e­sis Pan (G-Pan) and the am­pli­fied Per­cus­sive Har­mon­ic In­stru­ment (PHI) key­board are patent­ed in the name of Copeland and three as­so­ciates. Steel­pan is a per­cus­sion-type mu­si­cal in­stru­ment orig­i­nal­ly de­signed out of met­al oil bar­rels in back­yards in Trinidad and To­ba­go in the 1930s. Its mu­sic is wide­ly recog­nised as typ­i­cal of the Caribbean.The G-Pan in­volves an in­crease in the range of mu­si­cal notes pos­si­ble on the tra­di­tion­al steel­pan, while the PHI key­board in­volves syn­the­sis­ing steel­pan sounds with a range of sounds from oth­er in­stru­ments through a dig­i­tal mech­a­nism on the pan. Both of these build on the con­ven­tion­al steel­pan pro­to­type.

Copeland owns a pri­vate com­pa­ny, Panadigm, which is man­u­fac­tur­ing the syn­the­sis­ers.A study done at Cana­da's York Uni­ver­si­ty pre­dict­ed that elec­tron­ic steel­band per­cus­sion in­stru­ments would be worth mil­lions of dol­lars, ac­cord­ing to me­dia re­ports.Copeland, who has de­nied any wrong­do­ing to jour­nal­ists, is head of the UWI de­part­ment of elec­tri­cal and com­put­er en­gi­neer­ing, where the steel­pan lab­o­ra­to­ry is housed.He is a grad­u­ate of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies as well as Cana­di­an and Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ties. In 2008, he re­ceived the coun­try's high­est award, the Or­der of Trinidad and To­ba­go, for his de­vel­op­ment of the steel­pan.Copeland was named as one of the in­ven­tors of the elec­tron­ic steel­band in­stru­ments in the patent doc­u­ments is­sued by the Trinidad and To­ba­go In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Of­fice.Ac­cord­ing to these and the Eu­ro­pean Patent Of­fice 2009 doc­u­ments, an­oth­er in­ven­tor is Mar­cel By­ron, who is both chief tech­ni­cal of­fi­cer at Panadigm In­no­va­tions, as well as be­ing the chief re­search tech­ni­cian at the UWI St Au­gus­tine cam­pus' de­part­ment of elec­tri­cal and com­put­er en­gi­neer­ing.Oth­er named in­ven­tors are Kei­th May­nard (one of the orig­i­nal steel­pan re­searchers at Cariri, the Caribbean In­dus­tri­al Re­search In­sti­tute, in Trinidad in the 1980s) and steel­band mu­si­cian Ear­le Philip.Nei­ther the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, nor the uni­ver­si­ty are list­ed in any of the Caribbean or glob­al patent doc­u­ments seen by Re­search Caribbean as an in­ven­tor or pro­pri­etor.

How­ev­er, the rights were as­signed to the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, ac­cord­ing to the UWI en­gi­neer­ing de­part­ment's Web site un­der its mu­sic in­no­va­tion sub-sec­tion.What as­signed rights in­volved is al­so be­ing de­bat­ed as Pe­ter Tay­lor, a UWI grad­u­ate in eco­nom­ics and law, said the in­ter­ests of the Gov­ern­ment and peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go were se­cured through the as­sign­ment of rights, al­though the patents stand in the name of Copeland and his as­so­ciates. Tay­lor was the for­mer min­is­ter of le­gal af­fairs (No­vem­ber 8, 2007–May 25, 2010) which man­aged the port­fo­lio of the lo­cal in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights of­fice."The De­part­ment of Elec­tri­cal and Com­put­er En­gi­neer­ing con­tin­ues to lead lo­cal re­search and in­no­va­tion in the area of the steel­pan,'' the fac­ul­ty Web site states.It stat­ed the G-Pan was reg­is­tered or had a patent pend­ing with 61 or­gan­i­sa­tions, in­clud­ing the World In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Or­gan­i­sa­tion (Wipo), the Eu­ro­pean Patent Of­fice, the Unit­ed States Patent and Trade­mark Of­fice and the In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Of­fice of Trinidad and To­ba­go.''Prof Copeland is com­mer­cial­is­ing this in­ven­tion in Panadigm In­no­va­tions Lim­it­ed," ac­cord­ing to the state­ment, which re­port­ed that 35 coun­tries had ei­ther grant­ed patents or were in the process of grant­i­ng patents for the PHI as well.UWI is­sued a news re­lease last week stat­ing its con­cern "in the mat­ter that has arisen be­tween the State and prof Bri­an Copeland, a re­spect­ed aca­d­e­m­ic in the uni­ver­si­ty".UWI de­scribed it­self as ''an in­ter­est­ed par­ty in this mat­ter'' and as­sert­ed its con­tin­ued com­mit­ment "to see more re­search and de­vel­op­ment work con­vert­ed to vi­able prod­ucts and ser­vices."The uni­ver­si­ty not­ed that ''much of this work was done by UWI staff with­in the lab­o­ra­to­ries of the uni­ver­si­ty'' and said it had ''a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ful­ly as­cer­tain the mul­ti-faceted na­ture of this, in­clud­ing the uni­ver­si­ty's rights."

How­ev­er, UWI al­so recog­nised ''the sig­nif­i­cant fi­nan­cial sup­port of the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go."Giv­en in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty's ''po­ten­tial con­tri­bu­tion to eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment," the uni­ver­si­ty had poli­cies and guide­lines in place to man­age this process and said ''every ef­fort is tak­en to en­sure that these are ad­hered to by our re­searchers."The state­ment con­clud­ed that UWI will con­tin­ue dis­cus­sions among the par­ties "with the aim of reach­ing an un­der­stand­ing that best rep­re­sents all in­ter­ests and is ben­e­fi­cial to all par­ties".UWI St Au­gus­tine cam­pus prin­ci­pal, Clement Sankat, re­fused to com­ment fur­ther.He re­ferred Re­search Caribbean to the uni­ver­si­ty's IP pol­i­cy. The pol­i­cy cov­ers in­ven­tions, the use of uni­ver­si­ty fa­cil­i­ties, third-par­ty fund­ing, and pro­ceeds from com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion and sale.Copeland suc­ceed­ed Sankat as en­gi­neer­ing fac­ul­ty dean in 2007 when Sankat took up the po­si­tion as cam­pus prin­ci­pal, fol­low­ing the trans­fer of then prin­ci­pal Bhoen­dra­datt Tewarie (2002 – 2007) to the po­si­tion of pro vice chan­cel­lor of plan­ning and de­vel­op­ment. Tewarie, who holds a doc­tor­ate in lit­er­a­ture, is now a Min­is­ter in the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go.Tewarie said that as prin­ci­pal, he was not aware of the arrange­ments be­tween Copeland and the then gov­ern­ment.He told Re­search Caribbean: "I was very much aware of the re­search that was be­ing done on the steel­pan, on sound and on mu­sic, and I was very im­pressed by this work and I al­so vis­it­ed the lab to see the young re­searchers at work on prac­ti­cal projects un­der the guid­ance of Prof Copeland in the De­part­ment of En­gi­neer­ing.''

How­ev­er, Tewarie said the Prime Min­is­ter at the time and the then gov­ern­ment dealt di­rect­ly with Prof Copeland."There may have been oth­er peo­ple at the Uni­ver­si­ty who were aware of the arrange­ments with the Gov­ern­ment, but I was not aware of the terms and con­di­tions of any of the arrange­ments in ques­tion."Since the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's ac­tions, at least two oth­er peo­ple have claimed at least par­tial in­volve­ment in the tech­nolo­gies.News­day news­pa­pers re­port­ed Trinidad-born pan­nist Gar­net Broad­belt worked on a project to de­vel­op an elec­tron­ic steel­pan in 1994 at York Uni­ver­si­ty in Toron­to where he stud­ied mu­sic and an­thro­pol­o­gy.In 1995, Broad­belt sub­mit­ted a pro­pos­al for an elec­tron­ic pan to Pan Trin­ba­go, the Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion of steel­bands.Met­al­lur­gist Clement Im­bert, now deputy dean at the UWI en­gi­neer­ing fac­ul­ty, de­signed a way to mass-man­u­fac­ture steel­pans in the 1970s be­fore the Gov­ern­ment of the day with­drew fund­ing from the project. He has been con­duct­ing con­tin­u­ous re­search and de­vel­op­ment work on the steel­pan.Ad­di­tion­al­ly, var­i­ous UWI pub­lic doc­u­ments, in­clud­ing a news re­lease of Feb­ru­ary 6, 2008 head­lined "UWI Steel­pan Re­searchers in­vent elec­tron­ic PHI-pan" and the Sep­tem­ber 2009 is­sue of its month­ly newslet­ter, UWI To­day, name oth­ers said to have been in­volved in the project at the UWI Steel­pan Re­search Lab­o­ra­to­ry. See Page A10

Dr Kris Ram­per­sad is Ed­i­tor of Re­search Caribbean:www.re­searchre­search.com