Tuesday 21 October 2014

Caroline B Ncube

RSA: National Summit on Intellectual Property (IP) and Access to Medicines

Yesterday (20 October 2014) the TAC hosted its National Summit on Intellectual Property (IP) and Access to Medicines  (see its report on the summit here). An open letter to the President and the Minister of Trade and Industry was handed over to government representatives at the Summit. The letter is available in full here. The letter and summit remind us all once again of the urgent need to finalise the national IP policy and to thereafter effect some meaningful change to patent law.  If I were to sum it [pun intended] up in one phrase, I'd say 'where is the national IP policy?

Caroline B Ncube

Caroline B Ncube

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Bryce Matthewson
AUTHOR
22 October 2014 at 16:15 delete

Thanks Caroline. Interestingly there was an article in the Times yesterday (available here: http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/2014/10/21/dti-to-get-tough-on-patent-grants) about the progress of the Policy - it seems that we should expect a draft Bill by as early as next year.

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