Intellectual Property Protection — A Personal Story and Lessons Learned

Intellectual property (IP) is a complex topic that is especially difficult for those energetic and excited newcomers in the world of research and development (R&D). And then there is the developing world where IP is not given much value. International IP laws are complicated and require institutes and individuals to implement policies and procedures for proper protection. Today, I am sharing a touching story in this regard and I hope this may help many to safeguard their IP as they pursue their passion in today’s world.

It was winter of 2015. I had just returned to Pakistan from US after completing my PhD and Post Doctoral research from world’s leading (№1 at that time) university California Institute of Technology. There, I had developed world’s smallest glucose sensor for people with diabetes and won best thesis award in Nanotechnology in 2014. In Pakistan, I joined Information Technology University (ITU), Lahore as Assistant Professor in EE department. I was hoping to do similar high-quality, high-impact research in Pakistan and ITU of all the places appeared to share this vision.

Unfortunately, in December 2015, my cousin’s son Hamdan was brought to Children Hospital Lahore with respiratory infection. He needed a ventilator. However, public hospitals in Punjab were struggling to provide ventilator support for all patients. As a result, many children died. My cousin’s son was put on what is meant to be a temporary alternative i.e. an ambu bag. This device has to be manually inflated 24/7 at to provide respiration . My cousin and I took turns to do this for more than 3 days and nights. I had to lie down on the freezing floor of the hospital at nights and had to come to ITU to use clean bathrooms. However, all of this struggle couldn’t save Hamdan. I felt helpless and thought to go back to US immediately.

Soon I realized that instead of running away, I should do my part to solve the problem. I realized if I can automate and regulate the use of the ambu bag, it can help many patients. Hence, I started working on the idea. I contacted my friend Shahzad Durrani at SUPARCO and Dr. Ahsan Naeem at UET Lahore to hire someone with mechatronics experience to build the device I had in mind. I visited UET soon after as well and met some faculty members there. This was happening in early 2016 and the ITU faculty, especially the HoD of EE Dr. Tauseef Tauqeer and my office mate Dr. Junaid Qadir are aware of the details. Initially, I worked with a very talented graduate of UET, Lahore Mr. Wajahat Ali who was introduced to me by my then colleague at ITU Mr. Mustafa Naseem. Wajahat soon went for higher education and I found another UET graduate Mr. Saad Pasha through another colleague Mr. Shoaib Amjad Khan. Saad and I started materializing my design with support from ITU. Soon, we had our first prototype ready. We showed it to the VC Dr. Umar Saif who posted it on Facebook. This was August 2016. Soon after, MIT Technology Review Pakistan covered this work in an article, which was then published by Dawn news and even made waves across the border in India. This article has test data from the device along with the pictures of actual device, showing that we had not only made the device but had also confirmed its working in the lab. In simple words, the invention was already completed. I was also interviewed in person by the media team (Mr. Asim Zafar Khan) and the interview is available online. Afterwards, Saad Pasha and I went to many hospitals including Children Hospital Lahore (worked with Dr. Irfan Waheed, Professor of Neonatology) and Dr. Jodat at General Hospital Lahore to get their feedback to ‘productify’ the ventilator.

In December 2016, I had to return to US to continue my work on commercializing the glucose sensor. I realized this would make it difficult to work on the ventilator. However, I also realized that a successful completion and commercialization of a medical device will help me with other projects. ITU generously allowed my then research associate Saad Pasha to continue the project for some time under my remote supervision.

In summers of 2017, I returned to Pakistan for a family trip. While Saad and I were getting ready for human testing during my stay, I received a message by Shaheer Ahmed Piracha on Linkedin (we are no longer contacts on LinkedIn so he appears as ‘LinkedIn member’ on my side now).

This message clearly shows that Shaheer and I didn’t know each other and had never met before. In 2016, Shaheer was neither working on ventilator nor was with us as per his own Linked-In profile below.

My LinkedIn profile is open to public and has all of my work and related documents available.

After Shaheer and I met and he saw the ventilator, he really liked it and offered to help commercialize it. He was from a business family and had business contacts. I was happy with this as I was technically focused and this could help us make a product soon. Shaheer asked me to share some background material on the project. I shared with him a detailed proposal that I had prepared for HEC NRPU (which was submitted via ITU in 2016).

We soon tested the ventilator on human patients and it worked remarkably well. Unfortunately, I had to return to US while Shaheer decided to stay. He also mentioned to myself, Dr. Saif and rest of the ITU faculty that he will help us manage such projects within the umbrella of a biomedical research center that the ITU team had been wanting to make for some time. Hence, it was natural for us to continue to work with Shaheer. Shaheer’s work with us (to support our interaction with doctors) was documented in an article.

However, in the background, Shaheer got many IP related documents from Saad Pasha and started creating communication gaps between myself and Saad (an example is a message in which Saad shared the design with Shaheer which he sent to me even though Saad and I had been working together for long time). This made me suspicious and I advised Shaheer to keep things transparent. However, due to my physical absence, Shaheer continued to exploit the situation and even physically kept the device with him for many days.

Unfortunately, patent filing in Pakistan wasn’t a clear process and it took us some time to figure it out. We asked ITU many times but they also had no clear program to support patent filing. It can be seen through my emails that we had written this patent document months before Shaheer’s first contact with us.

Shaheer was under the impression that his strong family background (his father runs a big business in Pakistan) makes him worthy of much more. Unfortunately, many others in Pakistan share his views and told me to stay quite as ‘they are a strong party’. I told Shaheer many times that while I am willing to give him equity and leadership role in any company we may form, he can’t be legally on the patent as the device had been conceptualized and reduced to practice long before he started ‘helping’ us. I asked him categorically that which part of the device he claims to have invented and that one can’t be on a patent if one didn’t invent anything and just helped with commercialization. Of course he had no answer to it and just wanted to be on it as ‘he has none before’. One can see my google scholar profile to see that I have many other patents as well while Shaheer has no experience with device invention or writing patents.

Anyway, Shaheer had hired an external lawyer and submitted his plagiarized patent (without our consent) a day before we submitted it to Intellectual property office (IPO) Pakistan. It is easy to get a copy of his patent and compare it with our patent and my proposal to HEC to validate that he plagiarized our patent. When confronted , he told us that his father’s office filed the patent by ‘mistake’ and that he will retract it. However, instead he left for Boston and stopped answering us at all.

Shaheer didn’t stop here. He started pitching this project as his conception and didn’t mention ITU, myself, or Saad at any time. In fact , he plagiarized the very incident that happened to me and started claiming that it happened to his friend’s son. Shaheer was working with us in summers and he didn’t mention any such incident then. Here is a video in which he is first giving my version of the story and then he changed it to his version when he reached Boston. Frankly, the social class he belongs to in Pakistan doesn’t go to the public hospital systems the common public goes through, let alone staying there for 3 days.

Anyway, Shaheer has been pitching this idea to many forums in Boston and has been winning awards as the story is so touching and the device has so much potential. This includes Boston University’s Innovation@BU, HBS’s Peter M. Sacerdote $75,000 Grand Prize and $5,000 Crowd Favorite Prize, Laxmi-Mittal Seed for Change Award 2018, and MIT Sloan Healthcare Innovation Prize. To each of these programs, I have shared documentary details about this entire plagiarism and academic dishonesty saga. I know this is a difficult situation that they found themselves in and they were also deceived by Mr. Piracha. I would like to think that such places will have high standards, even beyond legalities, about IP theft and plagiarism and would do everything to prevent their resources and names be associated with it.

While all of this has been going on, Saad and I along with some unnamed local heroes in Pakistan have been working on the project using our personal funds and have made good progress. I am very disappointed the way this social cause has been taken by someone who can’t relate to the pains of the parents of the kids who I saw dying in front of me in that brutal and cold hospital ward. For people like Shaheer, this is just an opportunity to win awards, get fame, and make money.

I am sure my story isn’t the first time such IP theft and academic dishonesty happened. The sad part is that such people use their strong background and network to get away with this. Even the top most officials in Pakistan are afraid of taking any action against him despite all the documentary evidence. Furthermore, the other sad part is the lack of seriousness the top institutes in US like HBS, MIT, and BU have shown in investigating this incident, despite all my attempts and documentary evidence I shared with them in private messages. I am still hoping that this article may help them understand the full picture and they will set the right example for their future generations.

I have started legal action in Pakistan with the IPO office. My team there has been to couple of hearings whereas Shaheer has hired a lawyer who just keeps postponing the hearing to next one (sounds familiar?). All of this has really disappointed me and I have lost faith in justice, law, and morals. However, I have not lost all hope and that’s why I am writing this detailed account . There are countless witnesses to this story who can corroborate the details. I would also take this opportunity and challenge Mr. Piracha to present his narrative and his witnesses.

I will also like to say that I will continue my struggle and my efforts to create affordable, accessible, user-friendly healthcare solutions for those in need. This project wasn’t my first one, will certainly not be the last one. I am glad I have been blessed with a creative mind and empathy. I am sure there are many of you out there who want to develop solutions for social issues. Don’t let this story deter you. I am glad I am not the one who has to steal other people’s projects to get fame or money. In the supposed words of Nikola Tesla “I don’t care that they stole my idea; I care that they don’t have any of their own”.

There are many things one can learn from this story. The most important things is to file any new IP as soon as possible. The second lesson is to not share details of your work with anyone else before you sign proper paperwork , a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) at the least. However, unfortunately the best way to protect your work in today’s world is to only share the details with a very small group of people with whom you have built trust over a sufficiently long time. This is the only way you can focus on your work without the distractions of others stealing your work which can be heartbreaking.

Good luck with your endeavors and remember to file that patent!

The author can be reached at mujeeb.rahman@ITU.edu.pk