Introduction

Fostering scientific and technical progress, facilitating transfer of technology and boosting economic growth in the region being the main objectives of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the GCC Patent Office was established to further ensure fulfilling these objectives. The Gulf countries are viewed as an important investment market especially for overseas companies. This is confirmed by the increasing number of patent applications filed at the GCC Patent Office. This chapter aims to investigate the patent protection system within the GCC borders starting from the patentability requirements and subject matter through to the rights associated with granting a patent. It provides a general review of the GCC's patent protection standards and proposes future enhancements.

A patent is a government's grant of exclusive rights on an invention, which is a product or a process, for a limited amount of time, normally twenty years. Exclusive rights mean that the inventor, once the patent is granted, is able to exclude others from commercially exploiting the invention during the life of the patent. The right which patents accord “is to prevent all others - not just imitators, but even independent devisers of the same idea - from using the invention for the duration of the patent”. The GCC Supreme Council issued a Unified Patent Law in 1992. By virtue of this law, a GCC Patent Office was established in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and began accepting applications in 1998. However, the latest version of the Patent Regulation of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC Patent Regulation) was approved in November 1999.

The protection of a GCC patent extends to all member states of the GCC, namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It remains permissible to file a national application, although protection will be restricted to that country. Thus the GCC Patent Regulation should be regarded as a supplementary regime to the national patent system of each member state. In other words, it does not replace the national patent regime available individually in each of the GCC member states. A patent is defined in Art. 1(7) of the GCC Patent Regulation as “the document granted by the Patent Office to the owner of the invention so that his invention enjoys legal protection within all the Cooperation Council States according to the provisions of this Regulation and its Bylaws.”