Making strides in protecting intellectual property

In 2004, the government of the Dominican Republic (DR) made the bold decision to compete in the global market. In order to effectively do so it had to establish, for the first time, public policies that address the issue of intellectual and industrial property rights.

The daunting task of executing the Industrial Law fell upon Enrique Ramirez, who was appointed executive director of the newly-created National Office for Industrial Property, better known for its Spanish acronym ONAPI and whose main goal was to create “a simple system by which a business can get up and running as quickly as possible.”

“It sounded simple at first,” Ramirez explained. “We were asked to implement a system, including online solutions that would allow anyone to incorporate, seek patents and start the legal process. The problem we had is that ONAPI, at that time, had no staff, no website and no infrastructure. In fact, our building was in shambles and we had no filing system. In other words, we had no backlog of previously granted patents. In short, we had to start from scratch.”

Ramirez’ first step was to recruit the help of the DR’s National Center for Competitiveness (CNC). Their executive director, Andres Van der Horst, along with the United States Administration for International Development, had already commissioned a study to report on the difficulties in doing business in the Dominican Republic.

The report noted two major flaws and dozens of inefficiencies that needed to be corrected in order for ONAPI to become operational. “We took an inventory and found that the average length of time needed for a corporation to get up and running here was more than 120 days. We also found that between the years 2000 and 2005, the Dominican Republic awarded a grand total of zero patents, not because the ideas weren’t there, but because ONAPI wasn’t equipped to deal with the workflow. That clearly was unacceptable,” Ramirez said.

Ramirez then turned to the World Trade Organization for guidance. As the Dominican Republic moved toward integration with DR-CAFTA, he went to work to recruit and train staff under the guidelines of the WTO, sought and received a little more than $1.6 million to revamp ONAPI’s infrastructure and, through the Presidential Office of Telecommunications, by mid-2006 modernized services to the extent that incorporation time was cut by 50 percent.

“The system is still in the process of being built, but now we can say we have cut incorporation time from 120 days to about 65 days,” said Ramirez. “We have recruited 145 inspectors and staff. We’re online and offering services to foreign investors and local investors and we’ve built the most modern database and archive in the region.” Ramirez’s efforts earned his office the Presidential Medal for Excellence in Public Service in 2006.

And the private sector has noticed. “The effort to put together a real system that competes and that combats the problem of intellectual piracy is very visible,” said Arturo Perez, General Manager for Microsoft Dominicana. “I think where it has been most visible is in the software engineering industry, where piracy rates have gone down dramatically, largely due to the fact that there is a tangible government effort to systemize the patent system.”