Dr Kris Ram­per­sad

The in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty (IP) is­sues that have plagued the steel­pan, a mu­si­cal in­stru­ment cre­at­ed from dis­card­ed met­al oil bar­rels by im­pov­er­ished mu­si­cians, strike at the heart of in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty is­sues af­fect­ing the de­vel­op­ing world.As the mu­sic, first de­vel­oped in Trinidad and To­ba­go, has be­come sym­bol­ic of Caribbean in­no­va­tion in mu­sic, the re­gion has al­so shared the in­stru­ment's quest for recog­ni­tion.The com­plex­i­ties of glob­al­i­sa­tion, com­pet­i­tive trade and in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty regimes have made it dif­fi­cult to es­tab­lish own­er­ship and in­no­va­tion in the cre­ative sec­tors.Much about the de­vel­op­ment of the steel­pan still re­sides un­record­ed with­in oral and tra­di­tion­al knowl­edge, even as en­gi­neers and mu­si­cians ap­ply new tech­nolo­gies to the in­stru­ment.This month's clash be­tween Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) lec­tur­ers and tech­ni­cians and the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go is not the first time that con­tes­ta­tions of own­er­ship have arisen over the steel­pan, its mu­sic, and the process­es of man­u­fac­ture and tun­ing.Sev­er­al claimants out­side of the re­gion have filed for patents on var­i­ous as­pects of the steel­pan de­sign and tun­ing process­es and var­i­ous uni­ver­si­ties in North Amer­i­ca, the UK, Eu­rope, Japan and Aus­tralia of­fer aca­d­e­m­ic cours­es in pan mu­sic, tun­ing and de­sign.

For ex­am­ple, a patent claim by two US aca­d­e­mics, ti­tled "Pro­duc­tion of a Caribbean Steel­pan," is be­ing ap­pealed by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gov­ern­ment.In this case, Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware mu­sic lec­tur­er Har­vey Price, di­rec­tor of the Delaware Steel en­sem­ble, and his col­league, chem­i­cal en­gi­neer George Whit­myre, were grant­ed a claim in 2001.The Whit­myre/Price patent us­es hy­dro­form­ing, more com­mon­ly used in car man­u­fac­tur­ing, as a cost-ef­fec­tive way of us­ing high-pres­sure hy­draulic flu­id to mould mal­leable met­al in­to light­weight, strong, com­plex shapes.The two aca­d­e­mics formed a com­pa­ny, Hy­droS­teel, with Eu­ro­pean part­ner Ju­dith Spoo who is as­so­ci­at­ed with the PANKUL­TUR Steel­band and As­so­ci­a­tion in Ger­many and is vice pres­i­dent of Steel­pan Eu­ro­pean.Steel­pan Eu­ro­pean, an or­gan­i­sa­tion of steel­pan in­ter­ests in Bel­gium, the Nether­lands, Ger­many, Swe­den, the UK, Switzer­land, Den­mark, Fin­land and France, de­scribes it­self on its web site as "a pan-eu­ro­pean or­gan­i­sa­tion unit­ed by an in­her­ent and gen­uine in­ter­est to ex­plore and de­vel­op the full po­ten­tial of the steel­pan in­stru­ment and the tal­ent which abounds in its mem­bers. The coun­tries have signed a co-op­er­at­ing agree­ment which enun­ci­ates its long-term di­rec­tion en­sur­ing that the or­gan­i­sa­tion grows with a vi­sion and com­mon ob­jec­tives in mind."Ac­cord­ing to a 2002 state­ment by Ho­race Moran­cie, the Trinidad-born pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States Steel­band As­so­ci­a­tion (US­SA), the patent could be chal­lenged on the grounds that the hy­dro­form press was al­so used to pro­duce tenor pans in the 1970s at the Caribbean In­dus­tri­al Re­search In­sti­tute (Cariri).

How­ev­er, sev­er­al 2002/2003 ar­ti­cles said the in­no­va­tors, in­clud­ing UWI se­nior en­gi­neer­ing lec­tur­er Clement Im­bert, did not ap­ply for a patent be­cause they did not have enough mon­ey and be­cause gov­ern­ment ad­vis­ers said the process would be too ar­du­ous, thus leav­ing the door open for oth­ers to take ad­van­tage of the sit­u­a­tion.But there has been some progress. A US tenor pan patent in which Trinidad-born Amer­i­can Trevor King claimed to orig­i­nate an arrange­ment of notes called the Cy­cle of Fifths was re­voked last year when the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gov­ern­ment pro­vid­ed ev­i­dence that the pat­tern was iden­ti­cal to that de­vel­oped by lo­cal steel­pan pi­o­neer An­tho­ny Williams in the 1940s.Oral tes­ti­monies, mean­while, place the ori­gin of the pan to back­yard in­ven­tors of the 1920s and 1930s, which sug­gests that mod­ern in­no­va­tors are ben­e­fit­ing while the pi­o­neers re­main un­recog­nised.The cur­rent dis­pute be­tween a gov­ern­ment and some UWI en­gi­neers and tech­ni­cians sur­round­ing own­er­ship in the dig­i­tal and elec­tron­ic age, now adds a dif­fer­ent di­men­sion to the con­tin­u­ing saga of the steel­pan.On the one hand, while it shows up glar­ing de­fi­cien­cies in the knowl­edge of high ed­u­ca­tion ad­min­is­tra­tors about IP is­sues, it gives new cause for re­search and de­vel­op­ment in­sti­tu­tions in the re­gion to in­spect and up­grade the sta­tus of their IP arrange­ments with staff, as­so­ciates and fun­ders, as it promis­es to test the UWI pol­i­cy on pa­per and in prac­tice.

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