Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)

I am sharing time with Deputy Dara Murphy and Deputy Tom Barry.

It is important when discussing research and development, innovation, creativity, design and engineering that we understand the importance of patents in those areas. It is interesting that Albert Einstein cut his teeth as a clerk in a patents office before he went on to be so creative and innovative. We are having this debate following the death of Mr. Steve Jobs, somebody whose ideas and designs have played an incredibly important part in the 20th and 21st centuries. His legacy still has to be realised. We will probably come to understand in the years to come just how important he was to our lives today.

This Bill is very welcome. It is important that Ireland becomes a party to the London agreement. It is also important that we reduce our costs in this area, as it is key to research and development here and is important for innovation. I welcome the Minister's remarks about an EU patent. There must be a commitment to a unitary patent protection system in Europe, and we must do everything we can to realise it. A previous speaker referred to the costs of filing for patents. It is seen as a cost of innovation and we must reduce it if we can. We must do what we can to make it easier for us and our partners in Europe to work together towards making the patent process cheaper and more efficient for everybody. That would serve all of us.

The Minister said this is the first Bill he has brought to the Chamber. I am not sure if that is correct, but I propose to offer him some ideas for a second Bill on patents which could be introduced in the coming months or even years. In Ireland, the vast majority of patent applications are for physical products. When applying, one is required to put in an abstract patent design, so one describes one's product on paper. There is a debate at present on whether we should go back to a patenting system whereby one would be obliged to produce a physical manifestation of one's idea, that is, show a proven product one has invented and show how it works.

There are many benefits to that system. One is that it is more cost effective. The time to process the application is greatly reduced because one does not need to pore over pages and pages of detailed design specifications. Instead, one can simply see and examine the design. It also reduces translation costs, which is what we are dealing with today in terms of the London agreement, because the physical product exists. It also reduces costs if there is a dispute over patents. If one has filed for patent and the patent only exists on paper, and if understanding of that patent has been breached here or in another jurisdiction, the situation is far more difficult because one does not have a physical product with which to compare it.

If we move to a system wherein one is obliged to produce a physical manifestation of one's idea, it can greatly reduce costs. It also favours small inventors. A large company that has teams of lawyers and other people who are skilled and employed wholly to look at this area, it can put in many applications to file for patent before the product has even been properly invented, designed and proven. The system favours larger corporations over smaller inventors. If we moved to the other system, it would favour smaller inventors.

In fact, innovation and inventions currently being developed are making it easier for people to do that. I was in DCU yesterday where the Irish Technology Leadership Group is holding a Silicon Valley Comes to Ireland exposition. It has brought some Irish inventors and American investors to Dublin to show people what is happening. One of the systems on display was a 3D printer. Not many people are aware of what these machines can do. It takes a 3D representational model on a computer screen and turns it into a physical product. It is a fantastic piece of equipment. When a new inventor has an idea, he or she can draw up the design specifications using a design application programme on a computer and have it physically produced to submit to the Patents Office as part of the application. That is a case of somebody's great idea or innovation helping other people to innovate. It could help us to change our patent system and make it better and more cost effective for small inventors.

Another idea for a future patent Bill, if the Minister intends to bring one forward, arises from the innovation task force. The last Government withdrew the patent income tax exemption. This was an important exemption which I and others believed underlined our commitment to research and development. We must reverse this change. It would confirm our commitment to putting research and development at the heart of our plans for recovery. It would confirm to the rest of the world that this country truly wishes to have a smart economy and to do all it can to achieve that. We are not talking about a huge amount of money and the people affected are generally small inventors. Symbolically, however, it could be incredibly important for the State and how it does business in this area.

I put those two ideas to the Minister for, perhaps, future legislation. They merit attention and debate. I urge caution about where we place patents in terms of measuring innovation. Recently, I looked at China's 12th iteration of its five year plan and at Europe's 2020 strategy. In 2009, China had approximately 8,000 patents coming through. In 2010, it was 12,000. By 2015 it might surpass the US in terms of the amount of patents granted. It is using that to measure innovation in China, to say that it is an innovative country. However, with patents one is, in a way, trying to quantify what it not quantifiable, so I caution against using it as a measure of innovation.

It is not how the people in the tech transfer office of Stanford University measure innovation. They are more concerned with deals done to get products to the market because, as we know from our experience with universities here, many patents get left on the shelf. Many of these ideas are not worth people spending money or time on them. While they might be good in and of themselves, they do not necessarily prove innovation, so I caution against using it as a measure. Certainly, we must consider certain metrics and in that regard it plays a part, but it is not the be-all and end-all, saying in effect that ours is an innovative country simply because of how many patents we have.

I will briefly play devil's advocate in this area. Obviously patents are incredibly important and it is important that there is protection for our ideas. If somebody has the ingenuity and energy to patent an idea, it should be respected in law and in the markets. However, I recently met some young entrepreneurs working in the web development space. The type of thing they are concerned with patenting is coding, lines of code and on-line products. They were working together in an incubator unit, an environment where people share their ideas. Their view was that if they worked together, kicked ideas about together and overcame challenges and problems, everybody's boat would rise and everybody would be better off. It was an amazing culture of openness that I have not seen previously.

I asked them if they would not be worried that somebody might take their ideas, use them and undermine what they were trying to do. Their perspective was quite interesting: "Ideas are ten a penny; everybody has an idea. Do not come to me with an idea but with something done." Their opinion was that if somebody had the persistence and dedication to take an idea and develop it to the level where it would be wanted on the market, fair play to them and well done. It was an interesting aspect on intellectual property rights. It refers to a particular field, web 2.0, which involves coding, so it obviously would not apply across the range of things that would be patented, but I thought the idea was interesting. It meant sharing ideas and saying: "If you can make this one work, fair play. I will go with something else because there are so many ideas."

Things move so quickly that sometimes a patent can become irrelevant quite quickly. Also, if one has a small company that works in the Internet sector, one might not have the time or the money to spend five years and €10 million in courts trying to pursue somebody for infringing one's patent. By the time one is proven correct in the courts, the company that has taken the idea might be insolvent or the idea might no longer be relevant to the market. That is something that should be brought to the attention of the House given the nature of this debate.

However, I will return to the essential point, which is the Bill before us today. Anything we can do in the European Union to make it cheaper for those filing for and processing patents and to bring harmony to this area is welcome. It is great that the Minister is focusing on this issue which is incredibly important. I refer to everything we are trying to achieve in the smart economy in terms of innovation and urge the Minister to do much more. It is a fantastic way for us to prove ourselves in this space by giving the matter time in the House and by civil servants giving it even more time. We can say to the interest groups that it is something on which we are working and about which we are passionate and that we will do more.

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