Thursday 21 January 2010

Darren Olivier

When bad milk looks like sour grapes

Afro-IP encourages comment but two articles "in answer" to its post "Is Uganda's proposed anti- counterfeit goods legislation bad milk?" were really quite unexpected.

Alec van Gelder of the International Policy Network kindly wrote in:

"Here’s a response from International Policy Network, a think-tank based in London, to the rather alarmist interview with Sisule Misungu [Musungu] that we think rather misses the point: http://bit.ly/7JhxpK. The usual activist argument against IPRs ignores the glaring reality that the poor in poor countries would benefit for better protection of all property rights – tangible and otherwise – and that in some case this really is a life or death issue."

The Daily Nation, on the other hand, really went to town. Their article "Kenya May Buy Ugandan ARV's" by Business Daily surely goes some way to exonerating Uganda's president as a naive politician and makes a case for comprehensive IP legislation to protect home grown IP rights.

Musunga, should you be ashamed.

Darren Olivier

Darren Olivier

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1 comments:

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Anonymous
AUTHOR
25 January 2010 at 10:50 delete

Alec van Gelder from the industry-funded IPN insinuates that poor people will die without better intellectual property protection.

Is this a joke? If that's not an "alarmist" and specious argument, I don't know what is.

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