Global - It's been a tough year for Trinidad and Tobago. Tourism is way down, and its members of parliament are still fighting over disputed elections last December. But worst of all is the alleged theft of their national symbol: the steel drum.
On April 16, the daily Trinidad Express broke the story that two Americans, George Whitmyre and Harvey J. Price, had won a patent for ''the process of formation of a Caribbean steelpan using a hydroforming process.''
Since then, steel-drum band members from Port-of-Spain to San Fernando, editorial writers and even Camille Robinson-Regis, the government's legal affairs minister, have been up in arms.
''Nobody else legally owns the steelpan,'' Mr. Robinson-Regis said. ''It continues to be the national instrument of Trinidad and Tobago.''
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At this point we have to expect that people that love our instrument and have the funds to invest in research and development will do so, our hope is that improvement to our technology and profits made will be sheared with us.