THE Development Bank of Jamaica (DBJ) has announced the launch of the Patent Grant Fund which will allow researchers and inventors to access up to $4 million in financing.

“The patent grant aims to support research and development initiatives among high-potential, high-growth, technology and knowledge-based micro and small enterprises (MSEs) by providing grants that are to be used to file patent applications locally and internationally,” DBJ Managing Director Anthony Shaw explained.

It is one of the DBJ’s Boosting Innovation Growth and Entrepreneurial Ecosystems (BIGEE) programmes geared toward building a robust and sustained early-stage entrepreneurial ecosystem and supported by a five-year loan from the Inter-American Development Bank to the Government of Jamaica.

Applications for the grant can be made online at www.thingbigee.com and will remain open until Friday, November 25, 2022.

According to BIGEE Programme Manager Christopher Brown, “For the past couple months we have been working with critical stakeholders, such as the Jamaica Intellectual Property Office (JIPO), the Scientific Research Council and our local universities to ensure that the Patent Grant Fund is relevant to the Jamaican environment. We have arrived at a product that is attractive, has relevance to the local market, and will significantly assist inventors and researchers to take the first step in earning from their intellectual property.”

The Patent Grant Fund can be used (1) to finance patent application fees to cover drafting and filing, amendments, and examiner review; (2) to engage an approved patent attorney to conduct pre-filing search, assessment, drafting and filing, amendments, and preparing other miscellaneous documents; and (3) for provisional and non-provisional patent applications.

Though optimistic that the product will receive a positive market response, Lushana Cheddesingh, who had the responsibility of designing and executing the fund, noted that it is still in the first phase.

“We want to gauge the market to see what the response and uptake are. At the end of that process and following a detailed evaluation, we will go full force ahead and if we need to adjust and tweak the criteria we will,” Cheddesingh, technical director, direct business, BIGEE, said.