registering a patent in SA takes patience
15 May 2008

Yet South Africa, although credited with inventions such as the CAT scanner, Kreepy Krauly and Dollosse, still has a low level of innovation. The country's rate of registering patents - long held as the measure of a country's level of innovation - remains low, while entrepreneurs complain that the patenting process remains complex and costly.

Registering a patent locally can cost R8 000 to R30 000.

A report entitled the State of Patenting in South Africa, released last year, revealed that there had been no marked increase in the number of patents filed at the Companies and Intellectual Property Registration Office (Cipro) in the past 10 years.

The report's author, McLean Sibanda, a senior patent attorney for the Innovation Fund, said more than half of all patents held in South Africa emanated from abroad, with big businesses such as De Beers and Sasol, rather than entrepreneurs, accounting for most of the patents registered locally by South Africans.

Last year the Innovation Fund launched a patent support fund aimed at technology entrepreneurs. A similar one was launched in 2004, aimed at small businesses. Both funds are targeted at financing the patent process for entrepreneurs.  Yet the uptake has been poor, with only seven firms and entrepreneurs having been assisted by the funds. Sibanda admitted that the funds needed to be better marketed.

However an encouraging sign is the recent introduction of tax incentives to encourage investment of venture capital and research and development. But Pieter Dreyer of industrial design consultancy KM Product Design said innovative products were not automatic money spinners.  Dreyer said a new product often proved more costly than an established one, because it would require an entrepreneur to spend more educating the market about it.

Some products were not patentable, simply because they had been around for such a long time, he said. A patent expires after 20 years.  For some entrepreneurs, adapting foreign innovations to South African conditions may seem profitable, particularly in developing affordable alternatives to a product.  But Sibanda said entrepreneurs who adopted foreign products would most likely not be able to export them to other countries, where they would have patent protection.

He advised entrepreneurs who modified or adapted foreign products to rather register them as patents.

Wessel van Wyk, a patent attorney for Smit and Van Wyk, said an entrepreneur could choose one of two routes, depending on the amount he or she planned to invest in a product that had been adapted without patenting.

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Stephen Timm, www.busrep.co.za