Geisha Kow­lessar

The State has set­tled a law­suit over the patent rights of the Per­cus­sive Har­mon­ic In­stru­ment (PHI-pan) with its in­ven­tor, Pro­fes­sor Bri­an Copeland, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies.The an­nounce­ment was made yes­ter­day by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan af­ter Di­vali cel­e­bra­tions at his Ca­bil­do Cham­bers, Port-of-Spain, of­fice.

Ram­lo­gan said a set­tle­ment, which will see all three par­ties ben­e­fit­ing from the pro­ceeds of the in­stru­ment's fu­ture de­vel­op­ment, was reached be­cause he was "ap­pre­cia­tive of the cre­ativ­i­ty and in­no­v­a­tive­ness" of Copeland and did not want to "crush or in any­way stymie" the de­vel­op­ment of the na­tion­al in­stru­ment.

Say­ing he was mind­ful of the need to pro­tect the peo­ple's in­ter­est world­wide, Ram­lo­gan said when the mat­ter was re­ferred to me­di­a­tion with the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies be­ing joined as a par­ty to the pro­ceed­ings, he agreed that in­stead of the State fight­ing for to­tal con­trol of the in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights to the PHI, it should be trans­ferred to UWI to en­cour­age it to be the "own­er" and take all the nec­es­sary steps to en­cour­age its de­vel­op­ment and evo­lu­tion.

The mat­ter was re­ferred to me­di­a­tion on Ju­ly 19, 2013, af­ter which an agree­ment was reached on Oc­to­ber 4, 2013.Ram­lo­gan said the salient points of agree­ment were:

1. Own­er­ship of the patent would be trans­ferred to the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, where­so­ev­er and how­so­ev­er reg­is­tered

2. UWI would in­cor­po­rate a com­pa­ny to li­cense the patent

3. That com­pa­ny is man­dat­ed to ex­ploit the li­cense for prof­its and each par­ty would have equal rep­re­sen­ta­tion on the board of di­rec­tors of that com­pa­ny

4. The di­rec­tors are un­der du­ty to op­ti­mise the prof­its of the com­pa­ny:

a. In the in­ter­est of the peo­ple of T&T, whose in­ter­est are rep­re­sent­ed by the AG and the UWI

b. In the in­ter­est of the in­ven­tors, name­ly the de­fen­dants

5. The com­pa­ny is man­dat­ed to en­ter in­to con­sul­tan­cy agree­ment or agree­ments with the de­fen­dants to com­plete the de­sign of the PHI and to as­sist in the man­u­fac­ture and mar­ket­ing of the pan

6. Prof­its aris­ing to the com­pa­ny are to be shared 33 1/3 to each of the three par­ties.

Say­ing the agree­ment was favourable to all par­ties, Ram­lo­gan said it was the cit­i­zens who would ben­e­fit from the "cre­ation of this mod­ernised ver­sion of the steel­pan.""On a re­gion­al scale the UWI will have this patent reg­is­tered in its name and this speaks vol­umes as to the cre­ativ­i­ty fos­tered and en­cour­aged at this re­gion­al in­sti­tu­tion," he said.

"And recog­ni­tion is al­so giv­en to the in­no­v­a­tive and dili­gent ef­forts of the de­fen­dants, as they, too, will share in the prof­its de­rived from the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of the PHI and they will be con­sult­ed on the com­ple­tion of the de­sign of the PHI and the man­u­fac­ture and mar­ket­ing of the PHI."Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, UWI prin­ci­pal Pro­fes­sor Clement Sankat was on­ly will­ing to say he was aware an agree­ment had been reached but could not com­ment fur­ther as he was out of the coun­try.

Ac­cord­ing to the UWI Web site, PHI merges the pow­er­ful fa­cil­i­ty of MI­DI with a phys­i­cal form in­spired by the tra­di­tion­al steel­pan. MI­DI is an acronym for Mu­si­cal In­stru­ment De­vice In­ter­face. MI­DI fa­cil­i­tates the com­mu­ni­ca­tion of elec­tron­ic mu­sic syn­the­sis­ers over a net­work. Through MI­DI, the PHI can be am­pli­fied, just like any elec­tron­ic in­stru­ment avail­able on the mar­ket–it can be eas­i­ly made as loud as de­sired.