Patent Office of Ukraine: a sad fairy tale for adults with an open ending

This is a short story about the Ukrainian Patent Office, what it was like and what it is now.

Once upon a time, in the old days, during the day our intellectual “Scheherazade” told tales about zero tolerance for corruption, and at night it issued patents to its good friends - trolls and robbers. This is how such instructive stories appeared, such as the patent trolling of walnut exporters, which lasted from 2014 to 2019.

Then, for the unimpeded transportation of nuts, carriers had to pay a certain percentage to patent trolls, and the export volumes of this product were considerable and amounted to about 1 billion hryvnia per year. Or the story about the patent for “movement in a circle.” Somehow, an adviser to the mayor of Kyiv patented the running of the capital’s electric train in a circle and, in 2017, began receiving 251 thousand hryvnia per year in royalties from the Kievpastrans utility company.

These and other scandalous events were covered in the media at one time. And the source of these stories was Ukrpatent (State Enterprise “Ukrainian Institute of Intellectual Property”), which issued such dubious patents. Just as he issued monopoly rights to an invention for 20 years to one well-known Kharkov cable manufacturer, and it doesn’t matter that the product under invention patent No. 60285 at that time had been manufactured or used by enterprises in different countries for decades - it turned out the same way as with nuts. If you want to clear a cable through customs, pay the patent owner or leave the market, then the patent owner will simply sell more goods of his own production. All this, of course, was accompanied by a large number of litigations between the patent owner and various participants in the cable market; these litigations have been going on for almost 10 years.

And so, while the trials lasted, the validity period of this patent ended on its own, so to speak naturally.

In addition, in Ukraine, as part of the intellectual property reform, all powers from Ukrpatent, compromised by numerous “stories,” were transferred from November 8, 2022 to a newly formed structure - UKRNOIVI (State Organization “Ukrainian National Office of Intellectual Property and Innovation”) with a new management team and the “old” and experienced staff. Now UKRNOIVI positions itself as a professional and transparent IP office that understands the role of the patent office in a modern democratic state, in particular as one that helps stimulate innovative potential and ensure the competitiveness of the national economy, creates motivation for scientists, inventors and companies to develop truly new technologies and products, helps ensure fair access to innovation and prevents single players from monopolizing the market, thereby helping to maintain investment in research and development.

And it would seem that that’s all, the stories of patent trolling are over. But despite the war and destruction, while other market participants are trying to restore the damaged cable network and power system, the patent owner of the expired invention No. 60285 is trying to obtain a new patent for the next 20 years, now in UKRNOIV (invention application No. a202005894). And he did not invent a “bicycle”; the application for the invention contains a description of that very cable, which, for the sake of novelty, was only formally “powdered” a little with chemical impurities. It seems that the idea behind the invention was that the presence or absence of these minor impurities in the actual product would be extremely difficult to determine, so it would be possible to block competitors' products despite the presence of additives. Experts usually call such patents “evergreen”. 5 legal entities have already filed their official objections against this application for an invention, and now the qualification examination is ongoing at UKRNOIVI, which will dot the E. And you and I will be able to see and evaluate the results of the reform of the patent office.