An innovative idea: no more red tape

As The National reported yesterday, the Ministry of Economy is planning to remove the red tape for patent applications, allowing researchers to deal directly with the European agency.

He tries. And he tries again. The villagers are unhelpful, and so are the officials. He merely wishes to take up a promised job, but it's all to no avail. At every turn, K, the protagonist in Franz Kafka's The Castle, is stymied by mind-boggling bureaucracy.

It is a feeling that must be horribly familiar to anyone who has ever attempted to obtain a UAE patent. Documents must be translated into Arabic, notarised by the judicial department and processed by the UAE Patent Office, which has a backlog of applications going back several years. Once approved, the documents are then translated into English and sent for further approval by the European Patent Office.

Hopefully, that long bureaucratic queue, which can hold up patents for years, will soon be a thing of the past.

As The National reported yesterday, the Ministry of Economy is planning a major overhaul of the process for patent applications by removing local government involvement and allowing researchers to deal directly with the European agency.

It is an important first step, cutting reams of unnecessary red tape. But the truth is that there is much more to do to strengthen the spirit of innovation and intellectual property rights.

Only a few inventors have chosen to negotiate the UAE's patent process, choosing to file for US or European patents instead. "There is a feeling that [a UAE patent] would not be internationally recognised or respected at all," said Khaled Shuaib, a patent holder in video technology and associate professor at UAE University. "And that your rights to your property might not be protected, even in this country."

It is often said that the UAE's development plan depends on a "knowledge-based" economy, but we need to keep in mind exactly what that means. A framework to encourage and protect intellectual property has to be a foundation stone.

A year ago, one of the largest graduate business schools in the world, INSEAD, voted the UAE as the most innovative country in the Middle East, and the 24th in the world. Abu Dhabi in particular drew praise for its work in environmental fields, as did Dubai's knowledge clusters.

Researchers like Prof Shuaib show that individuals are eager to forge their own innovations that contribute to the nation. It would be inexcusable if bureaucratic failures blocked them at every turn.