By Joseph Varghese/Staff Reporter
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In a clear progression from importer to developer, Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) has applied for patents for more than 50 of its inventions and ideas from the Patent Corporation Treaty (PCT).
“QCRI, a premium research institute under the Qatar Foundation, will also launch soon a gadget named Doha CityBrowser to help newcomers get familiarised with the city,” executive director Dr Ahmed Elmagarmid told Gulf Times.
Some of the applications have already gone through the tests and might be awarded patents by the end of this year.
“We need to protect the intellectual property rights of many of our findings and inventions. So far we have filed more than 50 applications for patents. Some are challenged by other organisations elsewhere in the world while others have come through unchallenged.”
The QCRI director explained that the process for granting patents took a long time as it had to undergo various stages of screening, involving evaluation and further evolution of the product concept in some cases. He said the challenged applications needed to be contested to ascertain QCRI’s claim on the product.
“This needs to be done either by supporting or revising our claims. If other organisations come out with stronger arguments and claims than ours, we will have to yield to their claims,” he observed.
Dr Elmagarmid also stated that QCRI had been looking towards the future needs of Qatar and potential challenges that would arise in hosting mega events such as the FIFA World Cup 2022, and the influx of a large number of visitors to the country.
“One research project of this nature is an application called Doha CityBrowser. It is a project with our Arabic language technologies team, which is in its early stages. It is a gadget that will help visitors, especially newcomers to the city to know where to go, ask questions, ask for help and one that can be used to do many more functions . This is done using many of the dialects and machine translations done through the research in QCRI.”
He disclosed that QCRI planned to launch a number of learning tools such as an iPad application for Arabic language learners and an e-book reader. He said that there was an ongoing research about Arabic Tweets.
“We collect all the Arabic Tweets and analyse them. This enables us to understand the major focus of discussions in the Arab world especially among the Arab youth. This will help us pave the way for embracing the trends in the region such as the use of ‘Arabizi’ and various Arabic dialects.”
He observed that the collaboration between his centre and the US-based Massachusetts Institute of Technology had been working very well and had been quite beneficial. “Scientists from both organisations are working together in various areas – areas that are important to Qatar’s interests,” he said.
“We are building up co-operation for new centres such as cybersecurity and bioinformatics. We are utilising the collaboration with MIT to help set our priorities to build up in these areas.”
The QCRI office, presently located in Tornado Tower, will be moved to the upcoming Qatar Foundation Research and Development headquarters in Education City towards the end of this year or early next year.
QCRI at present has around 85 staff members who are engaged in various researches and the number is expected to go up to 350 in the coming years.
