Ceo Leslie Michael Jordan, foundation member of the defunked Pan am North Stars / and former St James North stars, on January 9th  2014 file a Pro se Design Patent, Trademark, and Copyright infringment suit against Professor Brian Copeland et al ( and others), for the illegal use without permission, of their technological cycle of 5th or 4ths and 5ths, also called the spider web pan, and their 26 & 29 inch in diameter "big tenor", what the Professor  Copeland called his Genisis G-pan, and where he and the then Government went to the United States, retained and attorney to challenge and revoke any and all Cycle of 5th patent, implementing that its identical to the local works of our steel pan pioneer Anthony Williams, revoking the patent, which allowed the Professor to patent his, alleged G-pan, and also his PHI -pan, using the already patented cycle of 5th or 4ths & 5ths, which had been patented since September 18th 1963 by S.N.S.E, for and in the name of Anthony Williams,  said patent was registered as a application for a design, where design laws are protected and provided for along copyright lines, which means; said copyright will last untill 70 years after the authors or inventor death also, no one can revoke a patent that is not their own, as Tampering and Interfearance has been implemented in this revokation, the claim was served on the Professor Febuary 6th 2014, and a defense is to be filed within 28 days after receiving said claim, or judgement maybe entered for the whole amount claimed, the Professor attorney has since failed file to a defense, as there up to their tricks playing for time, therefore:S.N.S.E. has file for Judgment for the whole amount claimed, as this is the proceedure of the Hall of Justice Supreme High Court, which happens to be a Rule of Law.

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  • Case dismissed with the claimant paying the defendant's costs !

    This means that the courts considered this a nuisance lawsuit.

    Congratulations , Mr. Copeland.

    I started having my doubts  of any validity of his claim , when he didn't seem to understand  the meaning of the technology being placed in the public domain.

    If that is the case , then no one can claim copyright.

    That ship has sailed!

    • Hello Glenroy

      Yes the ship sailed quite a long time ago. WHat many do not realise or recall is that the GPan patent was, in part, an attempt to cover lost ground for the benefit of Trinidad and Tobago. This is why we took great pains to describe the traditional  instrument and made reference to the early pioneers in the descriptive sections (NOTE -- NOT IN THE CLAIMS SECTION. NOTE: The Claims are what define a patent - this is where many get confused). The intention there was to forestall any more attempts to claim ownership of the traditional instrument.

      • Better late than never post. This was around the time I took a holiday from WST. Sidd here.

        The topic has arisen again in 2015 on several posts. The question of understanding Patents and Patents concerning the steel pan invention in particular. We have to give Tony Williams and Leslie Jordan credit for attempting to register the idea of the 4ths and 5ths note arrangement on pan. This was not a Patent registration as such. It was more of a Copyright design system. but because the steelpan itself is in public domain with hundreds of thousands of pans made each year with the 4ths and 5ths over the years, it was not possible to allow anyone sole rights including Williams. However some years ago a fella tried to Patent an arrangement of 4ths and 5th but did the arrangement differently from Williams own. He failed the patent test. So Patents offices know about Williams 4th and 5ths through the Patent of the G-pan and this is what persons in the pan world should now know. The attempt of the G-pan Patents allowed Patent offices across the globe to know that an original steel pan exits in the public domain with an arrangement of 4th and 5ths notes, so that no one can now go to the Patent offices across the globe and try to Patent the steelpan as was done by the pioneers. There is no Patents existing for Williams 4ths and 5ths pan notes arrangement and placement but still no one can Patent that now. In this way it is protected. God loves the pan and pan makers.Its a T&T original. No one can take that away from us. We must have that conviction.

    • Remember Glen, Leslie is not a Lawyer so a lot of things he may not know as "Public Domain", but he tried his best to explain  to us the best he could, I still say, if he had a better Lawyer it would have been different. Sometimes people lose a case due to Loop Holes and so forth, at least somebody tried.

  • Case dismissed even before it started... I guess the judge was as befuddled as we were with what the claimant was trying to say.  I am even more amazed by the comments on this post that clearly show that very few, if any,  have even bothered to read the G-Pan and PHI patents.

    Although the topic never arose in the hearing, just for the record, neither of those patent submissions claim ownership of the 4ths and 5ths note layout. The patent documents simply utilize  the layout pattern just as the hundreds of tuners do - the very same tuners from whom the claimant wants to extract copyright fees. Both documents detail the evolution of the steelpan and acknowledge the work of Tony Williams. You just have to read the documents or, even better, have a qualified lawyer read it for you.

    That leads me to my final comment ... after laboring since 1983 in steelpan technology research and development, I can now safely say that, especially in this country, the only people who benefit from innovation/invention efforts are the lawyers. 

    ORDER- Brian Copeland v SNSE dated 26-6-2014.pdf

    • I am very Sorry Leslie Jordan lost the Case, Lots of time if you don't have a very Good Lawyer that's what usually happens,

  • This effort further proves that Anthony "Muffman" Williams (and his associates) were even more genius that we ever imagined.

    The fact that his Intellectual Property rights were protected and registered at the Red House on 18/SEP/1963 and now duly logged and lodged with the Intellectual Property Office - Ministry of Legal Affairs, Trinidad ... on 17/NOV/2009 is fantastic.  I also await with bated breath to see the co-patent registered with the USPTO.

    Leslie Michael Jordan, I also humbly but earnestly suggest (pending proper legal opinion) for posterity, that you also log and lodge this with the Repository of Steelpan History at the Digital Library Services Centre, The Alma Jordan Library, The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad & Tobago, West Indies.

    As for 20/20 hindsight, I agree with Glenroy R Joseph that the steelpan pioneers of yester-year might not have been as "tuned-in" (pun intended) to look after protecting his/their rights, but those in authority should have and can yet do it, in terms of a cultural utility patent for the Steelpan of Trinidad & Tobago.

    Quote:
    PAN SHOCKER .............Americans patent pan plan
    By Terry Joseph (Trinidad Express, April 16, 2002) 

    Pan Trinbago president Patrick Arnold is equally concerned over the possibility of any part of the pan-manufacturing process being registered as the exclusive intellectual property of Whitmyre and Price. “We have long felt that one day a problem of this kind might surface and as recently as 1999 we sought fresh advice from government’s finest legal minds on this same matter,” Arnold said yesterday. “The State’s experts said it was too late to pursue security of intellectual property rights as inventor of the process and although one member of the legal team had a dissenting view, her opinion was overruled and the initiative was put to rest,” he said. In a 1999 interview with this reporter, attorney Sharon Le Gall, a member of the legal team that investigated the Pan Trinbago request, cited countries where the time elapsed between invention and claim was far longer. Even before that episode, Pan Trinbago had been pursuing the possibility of a patent for pan. At the first World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) meeting held here in 1983, then vice-president of Pan Trinbago, Nestor Sullivan, asked the experts gathered whether Trinidad and Tobago could patent pan. “They explained we would have to patent the process and that would have been arduous,” Sullivan said, “because it involved every detail, including how many times the hammer should hit a particular note when tuning and with what force. “What it sounds like now,” said Sullivan, “is that we should have gone through all the trouble then because it might require some very intricate and expensive legal manoeuvres to secure our position at this time.”
    Quote:
    Williams axed local pan press research
    By Terry Joseph (Trinidad Express, April 19, 2002) 


    Petty politics prevented Trinidad and Tobago from registering the invention of a hydroform pan press more than 20 years before the American duo that eventually secured a patent for the process. The locally developed hydroform press had already been commissioned and some 200 tenor pans pressed when then Prime Minister, Dr Eric Williams, shut off funding for the Caribbean Industrial Research Institute (Cariri) project. And it was all due to peevish politics. Cariri chairman Eugenio Moore had fallen out of favour with Dr Williams, from whose office the project was being funded directly but by so loose an arrangement, it was easy for Dr Williams to simply shut off the money pipeline, scuttling all work in the process. Caught in the same crossfire was the development of George V Park, also under Moore’s chairmanship.
    Quote:
    'Panmen of 1970s knew nothing about patents'
    (Trinidad Express - Vox Magazine, April 28, 2002)
     

    Former Pan Trinbago president Arnim Smith says no pannist he knew in the 1970's would have been brave enough to try to patent anything concerning the instrument. Smith, who was a member of the four-man team that visited Sweden to witness first application of the locally developed hydroforming process for making pans, said at the time pannists were mostly ignorant people, who had no idea about patents. They also had other concerns. "In any event, to the panman, places like The Red House was not places to go. Remember he had a history of getting lock up right in the panyard, far more when he carry a pan in The Red House opposite Police Headquarters," Smith said. "You talking about times when we was the outcasts, when they used to give a pan man 30 days in jail for anything. He could be sitting down quiet. As long as he had a pan, the authorities see him as creating a public nuisance, so going to where you sure they have police would be looked on as begging for some kind of trump-up charge and possibly jail," Smith said. "What the Government of the day should have done was to guide us in this area, because more than anybody else, they knew we didn't know anything about those things. We were really ignorant people, just fighting to get recognition for an instrument we had faith in. "By the time we get to know about patenting, pan was what you call public domain, because there is a period of time when something is in the public and not claimed or patented after a certain time, it becomes public domain. "For all those reasons, we miss the boat and the whole world patent all kinds of things about the steelband.
    Quote:
    Perspectives on Patenting the Steelpan
    By Richard Aching - Chief Technical Examiner, Intellectual Property Office, Ministry of Legal Affairs.
     

    When news of Whitmyre & Price being granted a United States patent (6,212,772 B1) for "Production of a Caribbean Steelpan" broke a few weeks ago, it understandably raised the ire of many a Trinbagonian. Reactions ranged from "it good for dem" to "how could they do that? Let's fight for it". It was even more exasperating to those in the steelpan industry who had been told over the years that it was too late to patent the steelpan, that we had lost the chance eons ago. Although it is too late to patent the steelpan as it is traditionally made, anyone can apply to patent new ways of manufacturing it.
    Trinidad & Tobago Pan News 2003
     
    Quote:
    Too late to patent pan, says Minister
    (Newsday April 30, 2003) 
    LEGAL AFFAIRS Minister Camille Robinson-Regis said "it was now too late to patent the steelpan", but that further inventions involving the steelpan were being examined to see if it can be protected by the Intellectual Properties (IP) Act. Robinson-Regis was addressing persons at a seminar on "Intellectual Property for Journalists" at Registration House yesterday when she made this statement. Explaining that the laws of IP conferred certain IP rights to the creator or owner of any area of intellectual property, and also allowed them to benefit from their creations, the Minister said the original inventors of the pan did not patent it, thus making it too late now. Additionally, the various laws also confers on the owner of the IP work financial rights for specific periods of time provided the conditions applicable to the specific law are met.

    Somebody dropped the ball and then somebody tried to pick-up but the courts will determine whether it was a pass or a foul. Either way, Liam Teague: ‘We have just begun to scratch the surface’ of steelpa... said it right and as the late Terry Joseph wrote:

    The "lead" (tenor/soprano) Steelpans from basic/standard (no frills) to deluxe/customized (bells and whistles) has a quoted cost range from 500.00 to 5,000.00 USD.  A fortune from pan - Terry Joseph  It is well-known in the pan community at large, that a well made-and-tuned steelpan from one of the masters (Stradivarius or Steinway level) at the top-end costs from around-and-about 3,000.00USD and up and involves a back-order waiting-time of up to weeks and months.   

    We're getting there, slowly but surely, step by step.

    Respect

  • Yep... then Pan Land & Gill's Pan Shop...
  • In hindsight people may criticize the older pan pioneers and tuners for not protecting their interests , but in this case i hold the steelbandsmen blameless.

    in the early sixties , pan tuners were just beginning to be aware that they could make a few dollars from tuning , but patents was probably last thing that panmen and tuners would have thought of.

    Even to the better educated pan people , the thought of patents would have been foreign territory.

    But hindsight is 20-20.

    I spent some time in panyards and around tuners back then , and that's probably not something most of them would have given any thought

    If there is anyone to blame , it would have been the so called caretakers of the culture, politicians and elected officials who should have been protecting the pan as part of our culture.

    Unfortunately, this was also a time when the steelband and its people were looked down upon by the people who would have known , the educated middle and upper class professionals.

    So if Tony Williams had the foresight to patent his creation in 1963 , I'm very impressed , and I wish him the best of luck

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