Gail Alexan­der

The Gov­ern­ment is tak­ing le­gal ac­tion against G-pan in­ven­tor Pro­fes­sor Bri­an Copeland and three as­so­ciates for prof­it­ing from sale of the G-Pan whose in­tel­lec­tu­al rights are owned by the Gov­ern­ment, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan said yes­ter­day. For­mer PNM cul­ture min­is­ter Ju­nia Re­grel­lo, who is list­ed as a di­rec­tor of Pana­dine In­no­va­tions com­pa­ny with Copeland, is al­so un­der scruti­ny to as­cer­tain if he re­mains a di­rec­tor of the com­pa­ny. Say­ing it was a "scan­dal of ma­jor pro­por­tions," Ram­lo­gan said:

"It is a breach of trust by Pro­fes­sor Copeland, I dare say, bor­der­ing on out­right fraud on the peo­ple of T&T.

"We (tax­pay­ers) are the ones who fund­ed the re­search and de­vel­op­ment of this steel­pan tech­nol­o­gy and for it to be claimed by any­one else is disin­gen­u­ous and il­le­gal," he added.

The Gov­ern­ment is seek­ing to re­cov­er pro­ceeds from sale of the G-Pan. Ram­lo­gan sent a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to Copeland at his Co­coyea ad­dress yes­ter­day. Copeland re­fused com­ment yes­ter­day, say­ing he had noth­ing to say on the is­sue. He, how­ev­er, said a re­sponse would come soon. Copeland is the hold­er of T&T's high­est ho­n­our-the Or­der of T&T-for the cre­ation of the G-Pan. The pan is based on the con­cept of a tenor pan with a wider va­ri­ety of notes. It was patent­ed to se­cure its in­tel­lec­tu­al rights. Ram­lo­gan said the mar­ket for the pan was big in Chi­na and Eu­rope, and the Gov­ern­ment would work to tap in­to this, but was be­ing pre­vent­ed by the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion. He said the Gov­ern­ment had spent $34.5 mil­lion to as­sist with the in­ven­tions by Copeland, in­clud­ing the Per­cus­sive Har­mo­nia In­stru­ment (PHI) pan, al­so at is­sue in the Gov­ern­ment's claim against Copeland.

Ram­lo­gan said it was in­tend­ed that the in­tel­lec­tu­al rights con­cern­ing the pans would be owned by the peo­ple and this was not­ed in the min­utes of the first Steel­pan Ini­tia­tive com­mit­tee meet­ing of Oc­to­ber 2005.

"(But) what has tran­spired since is a vir­tu­al scan­dal of ma­jor pro­por­tions," Ram­lo­gan added, not­ing a re­port on the is­sue from Queen's Coun­sel Vin­cent Nel­son. Find­ings re­veal a pri­ma fa­cie case of breach of trust by Copeland, he added. He said in­stead of pro­tect­ing the in­tel­lec­tu­al rights, Copeland sought to take away those rights by claim­ing per­son­al own­er­ship and seek­ing to per­son­al­ly ben­e­fit from the in­stru­ment.

This in­clud­ed prof­its of the PHI pan which was in­vent­ed us­ing state funds. He said the PHI pan was not ex­press­ly as­signed to the Gov­ern­ment, but this was be­ing rec­ti­fied. He said when the G-Pan was in­vent­ed, Copeland reg­is­tered it as be­ing his own and had to then as­sign it as be­long­ing to the Gov­ern­ment.

Ram­lo­gan said he was ad­vised that Copeland sub­se­quent­ly sold the G-Pan with­out the Gov­ern­ment's per­mis­sion and had not ac­count­ed for the pro­ceeds of sales. "That mon­ey be­longs to the peo­ple and Gov­ern­ment and there­fore ac­tion is com­ing to re­trieve those funds," he added. Ram­lo­gan said Copeland al­so breached pub­lic trust by reg­is­ter­ing him­self to­geth­er with Mar­cell By­ron, Kei­th May­nard and Phillip Earl as own­ers of the prop­er­ty rights of the PHI pan. Ram­lo­gan said Copeland "bla­tant­ly ig­nored" the terms of ref­er­ence and claimed the own­er­ship rights when he was sup­posed to pro­tect the peo­ple's rights in the is­sue. He said un­der sec­tions (59 and 60) of the Patents Act, the Gov­ern­ment would now re­voke the patent grant­ed to Copeland and as­so­ciates and act to se­cure T&T's in­ter­est. He said Pana­dine's Web site of­fered for sale a "prod­uct owned by the peo­ple." But he said the com­pa­ny in­volv­ing Copeland and Re­grel­lo had not filed com­pa­ny re­turns for some time.

On whether Re­grel­lo might be par­ty to the pro­ceed­ings, Ram­lo­gan could not say. But if Re­grel­lo was still part of the com­pa­ny, he would be part of the up­com­ing le­gal ac­tion, he said. Giv­en the "pub­licly close re­la­tion­ship be­tween Copeland and for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning," Ram­lo­gan said "it re­mains a mys­tery" why the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion did not at­tempt to stop the sit­u­a­tion. The Gov­ern­ment will seek dis­clo­sure of all agree­ments en­tered in­to by any com­pa­ny on the pans, all reg­is­tra­tion on in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights of both pans and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of peo­ple reg­is­tered as pur­port­ed own­ers of the in­ven­tions.

The Gov­ern­ment will al­so seek ac­counts of all rev­enues or pro­ceeds of sales from the pans and seek an in­junc­tion to halt the group from rep­re­sent­ing them­selves as the own­ers of the pans. Ram­lo­gan added an ad­vi­so­ry might al­so be is­sued over­seas via T&T diplo­mat­ic mis­sions.

He said the sit­u­a­tion was an af­front to the labour of sev­er­al uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents who had al­so worked on cre­at­ing the pan. He said it did not be­long to any one man. The AG said there were two oth­er probes in­to is­sues con­cern­ing the pre­vi­ous PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion. Ram­lo­gan's aide Hansen Stew­art al­so said Cul­ture Min­is­ter Win­ston Pe­ters had a state­ment to make on the is­sue. Pe­ters did not an­swer calls to his cell­phone yes­ter­day.