Great potential for employment opportunities for young people in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Company Bovard AG employs scientists and engineers specialised in the protection of inventions in the field of mechanical engineering, chemistry, physics, IT, telecommunications and electrical engineering. In October 2018, Tarik Kapić launched the institutional cooperation with universities in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Institute for Intellectual Property of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
A story about new employment opportunities for youth in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Tarik Kapić is a Swiss and European patent representative, who focuses on the protection of inventions, brands, industrial design and intellectual ideas specifically in the field of IT and communication.
Tarik was born in Bugojno, and has been living in Switzerland since 1993. He holds a degree in communication technologies from the EPFL in Lausanne and a degree in intellectual property protection from the ETH in Zurich. In the meantime, he also got a degree in law and spent two years in an academic exchange in Spain and France. He lives with his family in Bern.
''My job, in short, is to represent the interests of inventors before the Patents Office and courts'', explains Tarik. ''Part of my job is to provide advice to persons about what they can do with their invention and to lead the process of registration of the invention at the Patents Office. The registration requires a technical description of the invention, including all technical details about the functioning of such an invention. If the Office confirms the innovation, a confirmation of the patent is issued, which means that the invention has become legally protected. If the Office has a comment regarding the technical description, the application must be changed, amended and improved, and an application can be returned and amended several times until an invention is patented. The second part of my job in the field of intellectual property protection is the defence of patents before courts in cases when a protected product is used by someone else without the holder's consent''.
In December 2918, Tarik held a series of lectures at the University of Mostar and Zenica and at the Institute for Intellectual Property of Bosnia and Herzegovina about his extensive experience, the latest trends and specific cases from practice. The lectures were primarily related to intellectual property protection in the field of IT, communications and artificial intelligence in cooperation with the Ministry of Human Rights and Refugees of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Swiss Government.
''Persons in Bosnia and Herzegovina have demonstrated an extraordinary interest in these topics and I was truly delighted with the cooperation in Mostar and Zenica'', Tarik explains, visibly satisfied, ''I have to admit that I was also a bit surprised, because I thought that this industry was marginalised in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but persons there truly have a great know-how, both in terms of their knowledge about intellectual property and their practice. I was pleasantly surprised by the level of discussions we had. Students in Zenica kept asking questions without end, and we were finally literally thrown out from the lecture room. The interest was so great, there were so many questions that the time we had at our disposal was insufficient! This also happened in Mostar, at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Computing and Electrical Engineering and at the Faculty of Information Technology. After the lecture, which was not a typical lecture, but rather an interactive programme with questions and a discussion about specific cases, I got an extremely positive impression about students in Mostar!''
Potentials for establishing start-up companies
Tarik was particularly impressed by the interest of students in establishing start-up companies in the field of IT and digital services. ''They are so advanced and have such great ambitions. Although they are still very young, one can clearly see that they already have an entrepreneurial way of thinking. They had very concrete questions and I was amazed at the level of the creativity and quality of such questions. I was truly very, very pleasantly surprised! I also hold lectures at the ETH in Zurich and I can confirm that students from Bosnia and Herzegovina were much more interested in the topic and participated more in the discussion. Maybe because they do not have that many opportunities to talk to experts and obtain new know-how. In any case, they were excellent!''
Tarik has been in touch with his colleagues in Bosnia and Herzegovina for a number of years. He regularly communicates with them and they exchange all important information in the field of intellectual property protection. ''The profession of a patent lawyer also exists in Bosnia and Herzegovina, however, with slight differences. Around 20 people are actively involved in this field in Bosnia and Herzegovina. They are mostly lawyers who selected intellectual property as their specialty. I have been in touch with all of them since 2005 and we are regularly exchanging experiences and new information. Now we also have institutional cooperation, which started with the Universities of Zenica and Mostar.''
The series of lectures, which was supposed to take place every third year, was so successful that it is planned to be repeated at these universities as soon as the next academic year, and it is also planned to expand the cooperation to the University of Sarajevo, Tuzla and Banja Luka.
All European countries, except for Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro, are members of the European Patents Organisation, which has its seats in Munich and The Hague, and they have some sort of extended membership. The European Patents Organisation is not directly related to the EU and it is a fully independent international organisation, so that Switzerland, which is not an EU Member State, is also part of this European intellectual property regulatory system.
Tarik Kapić and his company Bovard AG represented two cases from Bosnia and Herzegovina. One case was related to the invention of a raspberry picking machine. Brothers Trako from Visoko wished to obtain a patent for this machine. The machine has a specific method of shaking the stems of raspberry plants, so that raspberries fall on a conveyor belt, which transports them to the storage. The second case was related to a brand protection for a winery from Čitluk, which prepared the export of its wine to the Swiss and EU market.
This extraordinary expert with a great energy and optimism, has another unusual field of work. In addition to IT and communication technology, software and business models, Tarik is also a specialist for watch making patent protection: ''I know how watches are made, because my father is a watchmaker and has a watchmaker's store in Bugojno. As a young child I learned about watch mechanisms and was able to disassemble and reassemble watches, clean them and sometimes also to repair them. This helped me a lot when I had the first clients in the field of watch making. You know, clients in this field are always looking for a representative who can offer expertise in the field of their idea or project. I have also acquired additional knowledge in this field, so that today I have regular clients from renowned watchmaking factories''.
Potentials for making youth stay and employing youth in Bosnia and Herzegovina
At the very end, we asked Tarik about the perspective regarding new jobs in the field of IT and intellectual property in Bosnia and Herzegovina. ''There is a lack of experts in this area both in Switzerland and Europe. That is also a field in which it is simple to establish a company if you have a good idea. In essence, you only need a computer and Internet and you can work from wherever you want. I have seen several such companies in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which were established and started operating in quite a short period of time, from an idea that a student had while studying at the university to the establishment of a company, once they graduated, and some of these companies already have clients abroad.'' Tarik believes that there is a great potential for employment opportunities for young people in Bosnia and Herzegovina. ''This is the very potential that can make young persons stay and work in Bosnia and Herzegovina, because these are the same jobs they would be doing in an EU country. So, if they can stay home and earn the same money they would also be earning abroad, why should they be leaving?! Students were asking specific questions about possibilities to protect their ideas and some future projects, rather than how they can use such ideas to emigrate to another country and work there.''
Tarik believes that the intellectual property basis is a development basis. He is therefore of the opinion that China is an extremely important indicator of current and future trends. Over the past years, China has made the development of intellectual property a strategic priority of its government and has been investing millions of dollars in the development of the industry of innovations. The goal of this country is to rank first when it comes to the number of inventions in the world and, in his opinion, it is on the way to achieve it. ''Today, there are more invention applications coming from China than the rest of the world, including the USA, Europe, Canada and Australia. This shows that intellectual property protection is extremely important!'', says Tarik. ''Our fellow nationals are truly innovative, because they have always had to fight and think about solutions for a problem or improvise in order to get everything they need. Here in Switzerland you simply go to the first store and you buy what you need. This tends to lull people into complacency. People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, on the other hand, are always inventing things! It would truly be a pity not to use such a potential! What needs to be raised is the awareness of the importance of intellectual ideas and their protection.''
Links:
Bovard AG: https://www.bovard.ch/de/index.php
Institute for Intellectual Property of Bosnia and Herzegovina: http://www.ipr.gov.ba/bs
Program “Dijaspora za razvoj“: https://dijaspora.mhrr.gov.ba/