ONAPI revealed this during a recent talk organised by the Instituto Oficina Melo Guerrero (IOMG), a Santo Domingo-based academic research institution, where the issue of access to patent information and legal status was raised.

Since the legislation implementing the World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) came into force in May 2000, the Dominican office has published around 2,500 patent applications. Nearly half of the 434 applications examined in the past 13 years have been granted, according to a response to a request for public information.

However, retrieving information and determining the legal status of those applications can be quite costly and complicated. Because ONAPI currently lacks a publicly searchable database, the only two options available are either requesting an official certification or personally going through each physical file. A certification of the status of a file costs $1,200 Dominican pesos or US$30 dollars. This does not include a copy of the application, which costs an additional $2.50 for the first 10 pages, and $.12 cents for every page afterwards. Since the files have an average of 595 pages – as estimated by ONAPI – a whole copy can cost around US$70 dollars each.

Due to their size and nature, physically reviewing these applications is also complex. To determine whether a granted patent is still in force or has lapsed, for instance, a person must look and try to find proof of payment of the annual renewal fees embedded in the physical files. If this exercise is performed over several applications, it can take various months to complete.

Such difficulties are likely to exacerbate information asymmetries and discourage competition.

Technical Capacity

The national IP strategy adopted earlier this year by the Dominican office recognised the creation of a patent database as one of the short-term needs. But the lack of technical capacity has delayed its installation, according to Parmenio Moquete, who represented ONAPI during the IOMG talk.

Technical capacity apparently was not an issue, however, for the launch of a trademarks database. That database, which provides information for more than 200,000 registered trademarks, was inaugurated last year along with a new institutional website. The director of ONAPI, Juan José Báez, said that the decisions on the website design “were shared” with local IP law firms.

The Dominican Republic holds one of the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Technology and Innovation Support Centers (TISCs) and actively hosts activities that they deem will strengthen IP technical capacity. Providing “[a]ccess to patent and scientific and technical databases” and “[a]ssistance and advice in using databases” are among its objectives. Their current services include an on-demand search of national and international documents, for which the TISC programme respectively charges $87 and $125 US dollars. The programme does not provide access to either open or commercial databases.

Databases in Developing Countries

Although databases are relatively simple tools that could help improve the transparency of the patent system, many developing countries still do not have one. Even in India, an information technology leader that strategically implements IP legislation, establishing its online patent database was a lengthy process that concluded in 2010. Other patent offices in developing countries that do have publicly searchable online databases are in Argentina, Brazil, China, Mexico, and Peru.

Databases such as Latipat-Espacenet or PatentScope reproduce patent documents as published by the national offices. However, the availability of legal status information often depends on whether co-operating national offices supply this data, and this is rarely the case for many countries.

Luis Gil Abinader is a researcher at the WTO Chair at the Latin American Faculty for Social Science (FLACSO). His opinions do not reflect the views of the WTO Chair or FLACSO. The talk at the IOMG was based on Term à la Carte, a paper authored by Gil Abinader that addresses the patent renewal mechanism. Luis can be reached at: Email: lgil@flacso.org.ar; Twitter: @abinader.