Industrial Property and Patent

by Alvin J. Buenaventura of FILCOLS for The Living Letter, a column published in Perlas ng Silangan Balita, a weekly newspaper in Cavite.


Patent for Inventions

According to World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) booklet on IP, intellectual property refers to creations of the mind: inventions, literary and artistic works, and symbols, names and images used in commerce.

There are two kinds of IP: industrial property and copyright. Under the industrial property, you will find patent, trademark or servicemark, industrial designs and geographical indications. Under copyright, you will find literary and artistic works.

Patent is what you call the rights and protection being given by the government to the inventors and their inventions. These inventions may be products or processes that help solve the problems and challenges we encounter.

Here is an example for the product is the washing machine. This invention helps solve your wife’s (or husband’s) problem called a mountain load of dirty clothes.

Here is an example for the process is the process of watering the mango tree using a solution with potassium nitrate. This invention makes the tree have flowers and eventually bear fruits more easily and faster than usual. It was the scientist Dr. Ramon Barba who invented this process in the 1960s.

Before the introduction of Dr. Barba’s process, mango trees are usually “pinauusukan” so that it will bear flowers and get ready to bear fruits. A big amount of smoke is needed in this process and usually it takes a very long time. It also brings tears to the person who does the “pagpapausok” for so many times before the tree bears any flower. Because of this, the mangoes became seasonal fruit and it doesn’t yield huge profit to the mango farmers.

Through his own research, Dr. Barba found out it was the ethylene from the smoke that makes the mango tree bear flowers. To hasten the process, one needs to engulf the whole tree with ethylene gas. Which posed to be a big problem indeed.

Dr. Barba’s creativity helped him discover the right process. He experimented with different chemicals until he discovered that watering the tree with a solution consisting of 100 liters of water and a kilo of potassium nitrate is enough to make the mango tree bear flowers in just one week.

This is the reason why mango industry flourished in the Philippines. Mango trees bore fruits more easily and faster than usual. It gave livelihood and brisk business not only to the owners and caretakers of mango trees but to sellers of pesticides, fruit vendors, fruit transportation entrepreneurs and the factory owners of mango products such as juice, jam, candy, preserved products as well. We may count the karinderya owners beside these kinds of factories as benefactors too. And the karinderya suppliers of fish, meat, rice and more.

As of now, the industry amounts to more than 40 million dollars or 1.8 billion pesos.

And because this process is owned by Dr. Barba, he was awarded a patent by the government through the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines. This will help him protect his moral and economic rights especially after the incident where another inventor was claiming ownership of the said process.

As a patent owner, Dr. Barba has the right and power to authorize the use of the process. He can give authorization to anyone he chooses for the use or sales of his invention. He can also sell it, have it rented or bequeath to his family.

What if your invention is just an improvement of another invention? Will you be given a patent for that? This is the topic of discussion in our next The Living Letter. If you have questions about the topic of discussion, please email filcols@gmail.com.

Translated from Filipino by Beverly W. Siy.