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The Iraqi Trademark Office closed earlier
this year, a victim of the hostilities of the war. Many
other ministries in Baghdad closed as well. Some of
the buildings sustained extensive damage and the contents
looted. In many court buildings, case files were destroyed
or looted. The Trademark Office in particular suffered
more than most; a big fire destroyed the trademark files
and records.
It's easy to dismiss the travails of the Trademark
Office; after all, weren't most of the trademark registrations
pictures of Saddam Hussein? His likeness appeared everywhere;
surely it had to dominate trademarks. There were probably
registrations like “Saddam's Best” for tony coffees
and “Mrs. Hussein's Bread” for the masses.
In truth though, the damage and destruction of
the Trademark Office exposed a sad state of affairs
in Iraq. Intellectual property, which includes trademarks
as well as patents, represents a high point of civilization.
Law is an integral part of civilizations. Laws set out
the rules under which we live and treat one another.
We are not allowed to simply take someone else's property
such as furniture or houses. Intellectual property gives
rights to certain kinds of ideas. A brand name and an
invention are treated in roughly the same way as furniture
and houses. To give ideas such recognition, such protection,
the law, and the people who enact the law, must be sophisticated.
Imagine the frustration of Iraqis. Scattered throughout
the country are ancient ruins. Those ruins represent
a different civilization, a different time, one where
the Iraqis had standing in the world. Last spring, it
was hard to say which was the more damaged, the ancient
ruins or the Trademark Office.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
suffered its own excitement a couple of years ago, after
9-11. Anthrax powder had contaminated the mails in Washington,
D.C. Located across the Potomac River from the District,
the USPTO receives an enormous amount of mail each day.
When the anthrax scare hit, the USPTO changed its mail
handling procedures. One was to irradiate the mail so
as kill any potential pathogens. Attorneys would send
off clean, crisp white papers to the USPTO and months
later, receive the same papers back; only they were
brown and crumbly. The papers may be sterile, but they
won't last long.
The anthrax scare made the USPTO
accelerate its internet capabilities. The USPTO is the
repository of over 6.6 million patents and several million
trademarks. It used to be that to delve into the library
of patents, one had to travel the USPTO itself, a sort
of pilgrimage to Patent Mecca. Some time later, after
microfilm became established as an archival tool, the
pilgrimage became shorter, as one could go to a major
university, or a big city library to view the collection
of patents. Now with the internet, any one in the world
can access the library from their own desk.
Try it sometime. Look up one of the
newest patents, No. 6,645,775, relating to insulin-like
growth factor (IGF). IGF is useful for healing wounds
and treating diabetes, heart conditions and neurological
disorders. In other words, the ‘775 represents the very
best of patent law. A new idea that has medical potential
is elevated to the stature of private property in order
to reward the inventor for the hard work involved.
The U.S. patent system has a dark side.
Look up No. 4,919,051, which is for a proximity mine.
The thing is designed to damage helicopters. It listens
and when it hears the right sound, shoots up from the
ground and explodes. Patents like the ‘051 recognize
that for all of our sophistication, we still live in
a world where frequently power and force are needed.
In some places, laws are arbitrarily
ignored. Take Libya as a frustrating example. Libya
already had a collection of trademark registrations
when it opened a new Trademark Office about a year ago.
Initially, only locals could obtain trademark registrations.
Talk about taking away the welcome mat. Then, this past
summer the government decided, apparently without public
input, to cancel all of the registrations dating from
1981 to December 2002. The reasoning reads like a comedy
skit: the applications were submitted to the wrong registrar.
They were submitted to the Companies Registrar when
they should have been submitted to the Trademark Registrar.
Well, OK, except the position of the Trademark Registrar
was vacant for all those years. In spite of the facade
of an intellectual property system, there's not much
respect for property rights in Libya.
With Christmas around the corner, it sure would
be nice if someone would invent peace on earth. Human
nature being what it is, that's a tall order. Once Henry
Ford made his money manufacturing cars, he gave it a
try. At the beginning of World War I, he chartered a
peace ship and sailed to Europe. His efforts had little
effect.
Here at home, U.S. attorneys no longer
receive crumbly brown papers back from the USPTO. Apparently,
the processing of mail has been modified. It's testimony
to the can-do spirit that makes civilizations great.
As American casualties rise with the declining
security, there is some good news out of Iraq. The Trademark
Office has reopened and attorneys are being called upon
to provide copies of their files to help the Trademark
Office reconstruct its records. The world, and particularly
Americans, keenly watch to see if Iraqis can regain
their civilization.
Originally Published
in the Fort Worth Businss Press |
