The Cabinet of Ministers has approved submitting amended regulations on the registration of intellectual property agents to Parliament — rules that for the first time open patent work to graduates in engineering and science, not only to lawyers.
The proposal was brought by the Minister of Trade, Commerce, Food Security and Cooperative Development under the Intellectual Property Act No. 36 of 2003, the Daily Mirror reported at 3.12 p.m. on Tuesday.
What changes
The substantive amendment is to Order 58 of the Intellectual Property Regulations No. 01 of 2006. It provides for people holding higher educational qualifications in specified subject areas — including first degrees in fields such as engineering and science — to be appointed as agents in relation to patents.
That is a narrower and more technical change than the headline suggests. The parent Act already allows lawyers, eligible non-lawyers and corporate bodies to be recognised in this role, and the 2006 regulations already set eligibility criteria for non-lawyers based on their qualifications. What the amendment does is specify the technical degrees that qualify a non-lawyer for patent work in particular — the one branch of intellectual property practice where the subject matter is itself scientific.
The rule is already gazetted — this is ratification
The sequence in the filing is worth reading carefully, because the regulation is not new.
- The 2006 regulations were published in Gazette Notification No. 1445/10 of 17 May 2006, empowering the Director General of Intellectual Property to set administrative procedures for registering agents.
- The amendment to Order 58 was published in Extraordinary Gazette Notification No. 2500/15 on 3 August 2026.
- The Cabinet decision of 27 October is to place that amendment before Parliament for approval.
So Tuesday’s decision comes nearly three months after the gazette itself. Regulations made under an Act of this kind require parliamentary approval to be confirmed, and the Cabinet step is the one that starts that process. The practical effect is ratification of a rule already published, not the announcement of a new policy.
A wording inconsistency in the filing
The account uses two different terms for the same role. The headline and the operative decision refer to intellectual property agents; the description of the parent Act refers to intellectual property associates. The filing does not distinguish them, and it is likely a rendering of a single statutory term rather than two categories. Readers should not infer that two separate registers exist.
Not reported
The filing does not name the Minister of Trade, Commerce, Food Security and Cooperative Development who submitted the proposal, nor give the date of the Cabinet meeting beyond the day of reporting. It does not list the “specific subject areas” the amendment recognises — engineering and science are given as examples, not as the full schedule — nor state the class of degree or any experience requirement. It does not say how many agents are currently on the register, whether the change was sought by the profession or by the Intellectual Property Office, or when Parliament is expected to take it up.
This article is carried on a single source. A search of EconomyNext, Island, Daily FT, Lanka Business Online, Daily News, NewsFirst, Ada Derana, Colombo Gazette and news.lk for the same Cabinet decision returned only older intellectual property material: an EconomyNext report on a proposed National Intellectual Property Policy dated 19 May 2026, and a Daily Mirror report on amendments for Madrid Protocol accession dated 6 February 2025. Both were fetched and dated, and neither covers this decision; they are not cited. Cabinet decisions on commercial regulation are often picked up a day later by the business desks, and this report will be updated if they file.
