Patent holder to set up company in Brunei to commercialise IP rights

A PATENT holder is looking to establish a company in Brunei in hopes of commercialising intellectual property (IP) rights in the country.

Ron Langford, the holder of a number of patents previously under Langford Media Network (LMN), and his Bruneian wife Koh Bee Lian is set to establish Beeguan Marketing Enterprise in Brunei as the corporate headquarters for the commercialisation of Langford's intellectual property

"These can generate quite a lot of money, because the technology is very important, particularly in the area of fraud, e-passports, and credit card protection," Langford said, adding that his IP rights are related to security and fraud.

The domestic market may be small for IP, but in the global market it is "very big", he said in an interview on Thursday.

"The IP rights previously owned by me, will have its commercial rights assigned to Beeguan Marketing, and we will then promote the IP globally, particularly in Australia, Singapore and the United States."

Langford, who was the first to submit a patent to Brunei's Patent Registry Office (PRO) earlier this year, is currently awaiting results of his application for a patent entitled "A Method & Protocol for Authenticating Security Documents and Financial Instruments Via A Software Application When Using Visual Content", by the end of August or the middle of September.

"That will be a big plus for us and the commercial rights will also be assigned to Beeguan Marketing. For that particular IP, we already have the patent granted in Australia, Singapore and the United States, and we submitted it at the PRO because we want to bring that in to Brunei," he said.

For this initiative, Beeguan Marketing has enlisted the help of Australian patent attorney Stephen Anderson who has been in Brunei over the past week to provide legal and technical advice to the couple.

Beeguan Marketing in a statement released on Thursday said that Anderson will represent them globally in a licensing and commercialisation programme in which Beeguan Marketing will be the global headquarters.

"He (Anderson) is a very prominent patent attorney in Australia, and while we've been going backwards and forwards looking for a lawyer who will represent us, particularly in the three aforementioned countries, we are very grateful to have found him," Langford said.

Anderson will act on behalf of Beeguan Marketing to assist the company in launching the licensing programme and marketing programme for the said patents.

The Melbourne-based lawyer has operated in many parts of the world, and was previously in charge of BHP Billion's IP division, and was an examiner with the Australian Patent Office.

Langford, his wife and Anderson met with the Brunei Economic Development Board's Chairman, Dato Paduka Hj Ali Bin Hj Apong, and the PRO's Deputy Registrar and Head of Patents Shahrinah Yusof Khan earlier this week for a courtesy call, said Langford.

Dato Hj Ali expressed his interest in finding new ways to encourage the younger generations to explore matters pertaining to IP during the courtesy call, he said.

"Dato Hj Ali has a lot of vision in trying to encourage the young people of Brunei, and he has issued an invitation for (Stephen) Anderson to come to Brunei in November to conduct seminars and workshops for university students, and also legal professionals here."

Langford added that Beeguan will be mulling the possibility of inviting Anderson to act as a consultant to lawyers in Brunei who are looking at becoming patent agents. The Brunei Times