Ukraine made the top-20 list of scientific and technological progress leaders
The World Intellectual Property Organization has determined the country’s prospects in the international scientific competition
At least three events that happened in the first half of November turned out to be extremely important for the Ukrainian scientific community. Firstly, Time Magazine published its Best Inventions of the Year 2012 list on November 1, with Enable Talk Gloves, designed by a Ukrainian research team, placing 7th out of 25 positions on the list. Secondly, the 100,000th industrial patent to be issued in Ukraine was registered on November 12. The State Intellectual Property Service of Ukraine has announced that the applicant will be granted the document on November 20 giving him 20-year exclusive rights for a way to increase the effectiveness of chemotherapy in the treatment of malignant tumors. And finally, Ukraine occupied the 7th position among top-15 middle income countries by the number of patent applications filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty in 2011. At the same time, rate of growth in innovation applications allowed Ukraine to make the top-20 list of scientific and technological progress leaders, The Day was told on November 15 at the Intellectual Property Investment Center (IPIC).
The IPIC’s data show 203,294 patents as registered in Ukraine from 1992 through 2012, giving the rate of over 200 inventions per million of population per year. This measure places Ukraine together with China and India among emerging players according to the Global Innovation Index 2012. The report notes that Ukraine registers growth in innovations despite its weak economy with prevailing low and middle incomes. Improving institutional framework, skilled research workforce and strong integration into the global financial market facilitate this growth.
According to Sviatoslav Liashchenko, who heads the state registration department at the state-run Ukrainian Industrial Property Institute, the number of issued patents may indicate a normalization of the economic situation. “We had stagnation during the crisis, while by now the situation has normalized. Quantity of domestic patent applications has increased significantly in the past two years. It is a sign of obvious progress and an explicit precondition for an economic recovery, if not an indicator of it,” Liashchenko says.
Based on the data published on the website of the State Intellectual Property Service of Ukraine, we estimate the government has earned more than 35.3 million hryvnias in registration fees for inventions, useful models and industrial designs so far this year. The bulk of this amount, or approximately 33.4 million hryvnias, was in annual fees for maintaining the patents. The fees vary depending on the date of the patent’s grant, with older patents being more expensive to maintain, but they can be no less than 5 and no more than 3,800 hryvnias, depending on the patent’s subject matter and the applicant’s status. Patent registration fees, including the filing, examination and publication ones, are estimated to total 1.8 million hryvnias this year. The state budget received 146,000 hryvnias in patent granting fees in 2012.
The data on introduction of inventions is more interesting. The Day wrote before that there are only isolated cases of Ukrainian scientists’ patented ideas to have been brought to fruition. The IPIC experts explain the situation by the fact that many inventions are registered by either inventors themselves, that is, private persons, or non-profit organizations such as research institutes. Accordingly, the financial resources needed to implement projects are severely limited in such cases. “Were private companies patent applicants, I would venture to predict that quality (value) of the applications would be higher, causing their introduction rate to go higher, too,” says Olena Kyiashko, a Ukrainian patent attorney and independent intellectual property appraiser. The IPIC estimates business community’s interest in research products at 1 to 2 percent. “At least 60 percent of all industrial patent applications come to us from research institutes,’ says Maryna Shynkarenko, head of the economic forecasting and statistics department at Ukrpatent. Commercial organizations, though, received just 3 to 4 percent of issued patents, the expert states.
