Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)
Link to this: Individually | In context

Question 128: To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the security and invigilation procedures which are in place to ensure that the content of all patents filed here are protected for Irish inventors and innovations. [21857/05]

Michael Ahern (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context

In common with legislation in most other countries, Irish law in section 28 of the Patents Act 1992 provides that a pending patent application shall be published, that is, made open to public inspection and therefore disclosed, as soon as practicable after the expiry of a period of eighteen months from the filing date, or if the priority of an earlier application for the same invention is being claimed, 18 months from the filing date of the earlier application. Up until the expiry of the 18-month period the content of a patent application including the description of the invention remains secret and is not disclosed by the Patents Office to anybody. An application which is withdrawn by the applicant prior to the expiry of the 18-month period is also never disclosed by the office.

Patent applications filed at the Patents Office in Dublin are normally transmitted to the Patents Office in Kilkenny using a courier service. A record is kept of all the documents being transmitted. The office considers this procedure to be secure and has never has a case of a document being lost or a package interfered with.

The Patents Office acts as a receiving office for European patent applications and patent applications filed under the patent co-operation treaty. On receipt, such applications are transmitted by registered post to the European Patent Office in The Hague and to the World Intellectual Property Organisation in Geneva. The office is satisfied that this procedure is secure and does not permit unauthorised disclosure of patent documents.

All documents held within the Patents Office, including unpublished patent documents, are held in a secure modern storage facility. Public access to the Patents Office is restricted and there is no such access to the working or file storage areas. In addition, the staff of the Patents Office are civil servants and are subject to the Official Secrets Act.

The office is satisfied that its internal administrative and security arrangements are such as to prevent the unauthorised disclosure of confidential documents including patent applications and that any disclosure of patent applications is only made in accordance with the legislation.