Draft patent law still under review

01 March 2010

In 2007 a draft patent law was issued that would bring Syria into line with international standards. The law was signed by the Minister of Economy and Trade and was put before the Cabinet of Ministers for consideration. A copy of the draft (in Arabic) can be obtained from the Syrian Patent Office (www.spo.gov.sy).

Syria granted only 69 patents in 2008, 58 in 2007 and 72 in 2006. By comparison, Turkey, Syria's northern neighbour, granted 659 patents in 2006. At the other end of the scale, the US and Japan each granted well over 100,000 in 2006.

The current patent law is said by some to discourage patentees from seeking patent protection in Syria. The law dates back to 1946 and Syria's independence from French occupation. It was amended in 1980 but its core provisions remained. The 1946 law establishes what is, in essence, a deposit system and contains a number of problematic provisions: it gives a 15-year protection period (now inconsistent with the TRIPs standard of 20 years), it prohibits patents for pharmaceutical preparations and invalidates patents that are not exploited in Syria within two years.

Despite the current state of the law, patent applications are going through a level of review, granted patents are being published for information purposes (23 granted patents were published in the first half of 2009) and pharmaceutical method patents are being granted. Indeed, there is some evidence of patent enforcement: the Patent Office reported receiving six complaints of patent infringement in 2008. Syria is also a member of the PCT (which entered into force on June 29 2003).

Although the new trade mark and designs law was approved and became law in 2007, the new patent law was held back. Many local industries are likely to be affected by an effective patent system. For example, the Syrian pharmaceutical industry is heavily protected by restrictions on the importation of foreign-made products, government controlled pricing and a ban on the set up of foreign drug manufacturers. Local drug manufacturers say that the absence of patent protection is allowing them to grow and develop. The draft patent law may well be caught between the political forces that are seeking to open up the Syrian economy and those that would prefer to maintain the status quo a little longer.