Upcoming Events for Africa’s IP Gurus

Upcoming Events for Africa’s IP Gurus

By Afro Ng'ombe   Thursday, October 16, 2014   No comments:

Two IP events relevant to Africa recently wandered onto this Little Leo’s hunting grounds.  For those who have the inclination and ability to travel, these are worth checking out.

Uganda

Next Monday, 27th October, the Uganda Christian University and Center for Health Human Rights and Development (CEHURD) as a participant in the Open AIR project are presenting a public lecture on Intellectual Property and Innovation in Africa. 

The program will feature world renowned experts and Open AIR researchers Dr. Jeremy de Beer and Dr. Chidi Oguamanam, both coming from the University of Ottawa in Canada.  Both are also contributors to the Open AIR books Innovation & Intellectual Porperty: Collaborating Dynamics in Africa and Knowledge & Innovation in Africa: Scenarios for the Future, which were released last December at the Open Air conference in Cape Town. (Afro-IP posts on the conference here.)

The lecture is from 2pm – 4pm Monday in lecture room (M3) at Uganda Christian University Mukono.  If you are interested in attending, please RSVP with Ms. Primah Kwagala at kwagalap@gmail.com.  There is a book launch event the following day, 28 October at Protea Hotel Kampala from 9am – noon.  Tickets for the book launch are available through Eventbrite.

Geneva

WIPO, WHO and WTO are collaborating on a program covering Innovation and Access to Medical Technologies – Challenges and Opportunities for Middle-Income Countries on 5 November.  This all-day event (8:30am – 5pm) will cover plenty of hot topics, including Ebola, trends in medical technologies, and challenges in ensuring access to medical technologies.  Full pdf schedule here.

Since roughly half of the countries on the continent are classified as middle-income countries in some way (one list here), this program could be relevant to a number of Afro-IP readers.  It’s also nice to see the big organizations collaborating together to discuss important issues.  Registration is open until 3 November through the WTO site.

 

If any readers are able to attend either of these programs, we’d love to hear reports back about them.

Read More

Another Report from the Global Congress

Another Report from the Global Congress

By Afro Ng'ombe   Tuesday, December 17, 2013   1 comment:

This Little Leo could say that this report is coming several days after the Global Congress ended so that it didn't crowd all the great activity on the blog. But, the truth is she wanted to explore many of the wonderful things Cape Town has to offer, including realizing very late in her stay that she could probably get actual maize meal here – something that is not readily available in the US – and make herself a delicious meal of nsima. (We have corn meal, but it's different and doesn't work well for nsima.) We fed, she's now ready to report on one more important session from the 3^rd Annual Global Congress on IP and the Public Interest. (Other reports here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. whew!)

Fellow Leo, Caroline Ncube, led a 2+ hour update on IP happenings from around the world. Over 20 people spoke, and Little Leo was very pleased to see Africa well represented on the podium. Rather than covering all 20 presentations, we'll look at the African updates.

North Africa

Riyadh Al Balushi from the Ministry of Legal Affairs in Oman covered copyright exceptions and limitations in the Arab world, which included several countries from North Africa. The North African countries seem to be a hotbed of unique exceptions. Of the 22 countries in the Arab world, two do not have copyright laws and those two are both in Africa, Somalia and Mauritania. Of the remaining African-Arab countries, only Tunisia does not have an exception allowing the media to reproduce public and political speeches without the author's permission. Most countries also allow the media to reproduce articles of political, religious or economic discussions in full as long the author did not explicitly say that article could not be copied for those purposes.

Algeria is one of a small number that allow publicly displayed art to be photographed without limiting parameters like incidental use. Riyadh pointed out that allow only a few countries have this exception, everyone takes pictures of public art anyway. Tunisia and Algeria are the only two countries to have an actual exception for parody, despite parody's popularity across the Arab region. Sudan is the only country that allows copying a photo of a famous person or politician without permission.

Nigeria

Moving to Sub-Saharan Africa, Adebambo Adewapo, former Director General of the Nigerian Copyright Commission and currently at the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, gave an update on user rights in Nigeria. This Little Leo was fascinated with his updated because she is very used to hearing “user rights” talked about in the sense of strictly “end users.” Adebambo however, discussed broadcasters, media houses and other users who need access to copyrighted material. Nigeria has specific copyright exceptions outlined in its Copyright Act, similar to fair dealing in the UK. There's not a lot of case law on this topic, though. The real debate in current Nigerian copyright law is in the area of recasting former obligations as rights. The users about which Adebambo was speaking are arguing that they have a right to negotiations with the copyright owners for use of material.

Kenya

Agatha Kabugu, librarian at University of Nairobi, gave a wonderful update on library's role in creating access to resources. The university library drafted an open access policy in 2011, which was adopted in December of 2012. The university Intellectual Property Policy was revised this year to match the Open Access Policy and the university started a tech and innovation support center to help researchers access information.

The new Open Access Policy specifies that publishing in open access journals does not hinder a person's promotion or tenure prospects. The university has a digital repository with CC-licensed works where staff members retain their copyright when they contribute to the repository; contribution is optional. Since its creation earlier this year, the repository has seen 3 million searches and 4 million item views. The university is now reaching out to alumni with the opportunity to add their works to the repository. The project has been great for the university and library because it increased the impact and visibility of research at the university and is facilitating global research collaboration. There are a few issues still being worked out, such as technical glitches, but the repository is off to a great start.

Another speaker from Kenya – Little Leo apologizes for not getting their name – discussed copyright exceptions and limitations in Kenya. There's a discontinuity within the Kenyan Constitution of 2010 which grants property rights and freedom of expression rights but without any sort of link between them. In general, Kenya has fair dealing, but its not fully defined. A recent case found a plagiarized university paper to be infringing. Another case found a book reviewing another book with a cover the same color as the original book to be a triable issue but didn't explain what copyright issue was involved.

Uganda

Charles Batambuze of National Book Trust of Uganda discussed the Ugandan campaign for copyright reform. Although the Ugandan Copyright Act is fairly new, dating from 2006, discussion during the drafting of an anti-counterfeiting bill altered people to some problems with the copyright act. Campaign for reform started in earnest in 2012. Issues up for debate include the ability of libraries to format shift or circumvent technical protection measures, parallel imports, compulsory licensing provisions that would be logistically enforceable and prohibiting copyright exceptions and limitations from being overridden by private contracts. Journals are working to educate people about how copyright law affects average Ugandans and discussions are happening with people in government and vice chancellors at the universities. Charles also announced that the Ugandan Creative Commons licenses launched this year and rights holders are starting to use the licenses.

South Africa

Trudi van Wyk of the South African department of higher education and training discussed the importance of open educational content in South Africa. The important part when dealing with open educational content is not rights, but responsibilities. The South African government has decided to go the open route and now needs to insure that the materials used are of proper quality.

Open educational resources are not about cost-free resources, but about resources that are cost-free to the end-users. Therefore, creative business models are needed. Currently, schools in South Africa can choose whether to use the open resources or the proprietary ones. Open books are about $5, proprietary are about $25.

Read More

Users' Rights Over All?

Users' Rights Over All?

By Afro Ng'ombe   Thursday, December 12, 2013   No comments:

With the shift from the Open Air conference to the Global Congress on IP and the Public Interest, the Leos have separated from the pride and are out exploring different tracks of the program. This Little Leo ventured into the combined User Rights/Openness/Enforcement tracks session on Conceptualising Users' Rights: Copyright, Open Access and Enforcement in Dialogue. She felt like she wandered into a wolf pack, knowing there were similarities between her fellow lions and these wolves but wondering “what the heck is going on here.” Her take away from this session was that the copyright of the future is going to come from Africa, not from Western ideologists.

The session was introduced by Afro-Leo Caroline Ncube who gave an overview of the Open Air project and things from the past two days for the benefit of those who [foolishly in this Little Leo's opinion] skipped the Open Air part of the conference. She also gave reports from the field on IP reform on the continent. Both Uganda and Botswana have people engaged in advocacy work, but there is no reform on the table yet. In South Africa, copyright exceptions and limitations as a concept is seen as a given and the only issue is working out the details.

From there, the other speakers took over: Niva Elikin-Koren spoke about fundamental freedoms as a force pushing against strong intellectual property rights. Peter Jaszi talked of getting ordinary people in the United States to understand the threat posed to them personally by strong IP rights. Lawrence Liang of India discussed the legitimacy of IP rights. Alek Tarkowski talked about the new definition of “Open” and the growth and change of open models in Poland. And lastly, Delia Browne discussed Australia's Smart Copyright Agenda, which attempts to balance copyright compliance with cost management in the Australian school system.

Much of the discourse was esoteric and idealistic, coming from a mindset that does not allow for competing views of society, whether societal structure or societal purpose. However, as one attendee from Kenya pointed out after the program, it helps to know what other people are thinking.  Indeed, there are some useful tidbits for the practical application-focused Africa.

Ms Elikin-Koren's focus on fundamental rights is an idea already adopted in Africa, particularly in the patent arena where access to medicines and public health are seen as interests that must be balanced with IP rights – at least in the discussions happening among those attempting to reform policy if not within the existing policies themselves. Ms Elikin-Koren stressed the importance of access to knowledge in the ability of citizens to participate in democracy, requiring information to vote (or at least to make an informed vote). Again, this concept seems to already be incorporated as one of the balancing factors in African IP discussions.

Mr. Tarkowski's and Ms Browne's experiences in their respective countries demonstrate effective balancing of interests. Poland's open movement started with grassroots activity and as their practices became more accepted, the movement switched to policy work and top-down integration. At the same time, as the open movement's ideas spread, they morphed a bit from the pure “Open” of legal openness to a more encompassing circle where open began to mean access whether legal ease of access, cost east of access or technological ease of access. Sometimes these are all combined, and sometimes they are not, but even individually, they represent an increase in access to knowledge. Australia's changes have had a similar result as the copyright reform has focused on easier and flexible access to works.

The main similarity between these two experiences and what this Little Leo sees happening in Africa is a natural flow to balance. As one participant said after the presentation, “but what about the creator's rights? We need to protect those, too.” The African policy makers and influencers are not working on “copyright reform” like the Western world with its long entrenched ideals. Africa is building its own system. Within this conversation, there are voices pushing for the new system to look just like the old system, but there is also an innate understanding of the balance needed for a system to work. And this is where Africa is way ahead of the rest of the world.

Read More

Day 3 (or is it Day 1?) of the Global Congress for IP in the Public Interest

Day 3 (or is it Day 1?) of the Global Congress for IP in the Public Interest

By AfroTwiga   Wednesday, December 11, 2013   1 comment:

Today is Day 3 of the Global Congress and OpenAIR conference in Cape Town, SA. It also marks the shift of focus from OpenAIR to the Global Congress per se.

The day began with, among other things, a summary of activist activities in Canada against oppressive copyright legislation. It seems that Canadians are relatively [at least relative to Kenyans, grumbles this Leo] easy to mobilize on this topic. When the Canadian government began discussing DMCA-type legislation, 30,000(!) physical letters [who writes physical letters these days?] flooded the government from citizens concerned about the way that the proposed legislation would restrict freedom in copyrighted works. 

Prof. Ben Sihanya, a copyright expert at the University of Nairobi, pointed out that there is a ceasefire between the pro-copyright camp and the no-copyright camp, and the ceasefire is brought about by the Creative Commons. He stated that we should seriously explore the Creative Commons option to opening information within the context of a protection regime.  This position is very consistent with Tobias Schonwetter (Director of the IP Unit at Cape Town University), who opened the Global Congress by urging attendees to look for common ground between pro- and anti-protectionism.

Prof. Sihanya also cited the effort underway in Kenya to combine all IP authorities within one government ministry as an example of an attack on copyright and, particularly, on open access. The logic is that governments usually focus more resources on patents at the exclusion of copyrights, and by combining the two offices into one authority, copyright will further suffer.  At this moment, it seems likely that the effort will sail through government with little/no opposition. [As noted above, activism in copyright issues is difficult to mobilize in Kenya.] This Leo is very curious whether readers feel that it is good to combine all IP offices (as is done in the UK, for instance) or whether it is better to keep the offices separate (as is done in the US, for instance). Please do share in the comments.

The order of the day (thankfully!) seemed to be in presenting IP activism activities with humor.

Sunil Abraham provided a hilarious talk on The Freedom Continuum. An example: “Freedom is like the Kama Sutra – there are many positions one can take.” Mr. Abraham also brilliantly suggested a method for plausible deniability in the world of biometric identification and oppressive government oversight. By posting all of my biometric information (fingerprints, eye scans, etc.) on the internet, I can plausibly deny any crimes or contracts or tracking by the government because, well, it’s all online so it couldn’t have been me, right? So we should (paradoxically) fight incursion into data privacy simply by releasing all biometric data about ourselves.

Cats have been chasing mice for a long, long time.
A cat with a mouse in its mouth Unknown artist, c. 1480

Also quite amusing was the comparison of the IP debate to Tom and Jerry, that iconic Cat (Kat?) and Mouse duo who are perpetually chasing one another. Tom the Cat represents Big Business, corporate interests, the USTR, etc. Tom is chasing (but can never quite catch) Jerry the Mouse, who represents civil society, human rights activists, the open source movement, etc. An audience member pointedly observed that Jerry typically runs around for a bit and then disappears into a hole in the wall, where he stays for some time before emerging to torture Tom again. The obvious point is that activists (i.e., the audience at the Global Congress) will never make substantial progress until they stop disappearing for long periods of time and start acting more like a cat (or even, perhaps, like a dog).

This Leo finds it curious to be a Katfriend and yet to sympathize and identify largely with mice.

Read More

South Africa: IP protection of traditional knowledge: Act gazetted

South Africa: IP protection of traditional knowledge: Act gazetted

By Caroline B Ncube   Wednesday, December 11, 2013   No comments:

The Intellectual Property Laws Amendment Act, 28 of 2013 was gazetted on 10 December 2013 (Government Gazette 37148). It amends various pieces of IP legislation to cater for the protection of traditional knowledge. It has come under severe criticism by many, including Prof Owen Dean, and has been countered by the introduction of a Private Member's Bill by the Democratic Alliance's Dr WIlmot James (the Protection of Traditional Knowledge Bill). What has become of this bill and its future prospects will be the subject of another post, in the near future. 

The IP Laws Amendment Act will come into force at a date to be promulgated. 

Read More

The Global Congress on IP and the Public Interest, Day 2

The Global Congress on IP and the Public Interest, Day 2

By AfroTwiga   Tuesday, December 10, 2013   No comments:

Today the Global Congress largely focused on the OpenAIR Project, and specifically on three “Scenarios” launched today by OpenAIR (available for free download here).  The Scenarios are studies that explore, based on a number of base assumptions, the state of Africa and African IP as it may exist in the year 2035.

Three flavours of Africa -
which do you prefer?

Each Scenario was “launched” with a short, sometimes amusing, and sometimes depressing dramatization. The actors portrayed young Africans without access to jobs, government workers unhappy with government behaviour, and entrepreneurs with a super-upbeat view on business in Africa, among others. (This was easily the most engaging book-launch this Leo can remember.)

The Scenarios themselves cover a wide range. One Scenario suggests that “wireless connectivity” will become the most important factor in economic development, and will enable those with access (a majority, presumably) to hold leaders accountable for their governing. A second Scenario suggests that the “informal economy is the new norm,” and that the informal economy (i.e., the economy where IPR is largely irrelevant) will increase in importance and will support the majority of the population. The third Scenario suggests that a “sincerely African” economy will develop in response to external pressures [such as global warming, or terrorism perhaps?], and will draw on traditional knowledge and traditional cultural norms to address societal issues.

OpenAIR continuously stresses that these Scenarios are not supposed to be “the good, the bad, and the ugly”. Each Scenario has good aspects, and each has bad aspects. True enough, but this is largely dependent on your point of view. If you are a fan of (or if you view more favorably) development based on high technology, then the “wireless connectivity” Scenario would be “the good”, and the “sincerely African” Scenario with its emphasis on traditional solutions and knowledge would be “the bad”. If you believe that government is the answer to all of society’s ills, then the “informal economy” Scenario sounds quite bad. The point is that it’s impossible to ignore perspective and background when someone is reading the Scenarios.

OpenAIR also stresses that the Scenarios are not “predictive” in that they don’t say that any specific outcomes will happen. Rather, the Scenarios are supposed to be tools for understanding activities and events, and are supposed to explain possible outcomes if certain events occur. To this Leo, it’s a distinction without much of a difference.

One thing is sure: these Scenarios are a treasure trove for academics and even for multinational businesses. In fact the Scenario-building exercise was developed from a previous experience developed by/for Royal Dutch Shell. Many on the Continent will be skeptical of anything done by Shell (see controversies here). Nevertheless, a quick glance through the Scenarios (check them out!) confirms that they will be a very interesting read and a useful tool.

The day ended with a lecture from Peter Drahos (you know someone is important when they have a Wikipedia page).  Prof. Drahos spoke about energy, finance, enforcement, strategic disengagement by developing countries (as applied to financial architecture), and the power and importance of the BRICS countries in pushing the agenda of developing countries. “If [they] don’t, you will be subject to hegemony.” Here, here! This message was surely well received by the audience of the Global Congress...

Read More

Public-Private Partnership?

Public-Private Partnership?

By Afro Ng'ombe   Tuesday, December 10, 2013   No comments:

Leo Isaac Rutenberg has done a wonderful job covering the events of Day 1 at the  3^rd Annual GlobalCongress on IP and the Public Interest here and here.  This Little Leo won't attempt to add more on that score, but she does want to discuss one point that was raised during the conference introduction.

Public and private interests in intellectual property are not at odds with one another and the best IP policy going forwards will be the result of public sector-private sector partnerships.  Little Leo is summarizing of course (and hopefully correctly).  This begs the question, where is the private sector? 

Of the 300-some attendees for this conference, this Little Leo counted 10 institutions on the attendee list that sound like they might be private sector.  Two are from the US (Little Leo included), one is from Uganda, one from India, there might have been a South African, and the rest are Nigerian.  When this Little Leo attends programs on similar topics arranged by the private sector (or the US government, which seems rather focused on private sector interests), the attendance is similarly lopsided in the opposite way.  How do we build a partnership between public and private sectors for the purpose of building an IP policy framework for the future if our conversations are so lopsided?

There are many readers of this blog in the public sector.  There are many readers of this blog who are in the private sector.  And, there are many readers of this blog in attendance at the conference.  So this Little Leo's question to the private sector readers who are not in attendance is "why not?"  Where you unaware of it?  Does it not seem valuable?  Budget issues?  Don't like Cape Town?

This Little Leo has attended a number of public sector and private sector programs in the US, and programs that claim to be linking both but usually just have the same ol' participants talking past each other.  She's rather given up hope of real conversations occurring there.  But as usual, Africa has so much more potential than the old stalwarts.  The deep chasms and clear fight lines have not yet dried in the mud.

How do we build the conversations to, as Jeremy de Beer put it yesterday, leapfrog to the IP policies of the future?

Photo: Handshake CC-BY-ND Sean Svadilfari available on Flickr.

Read More

Global Congress for IP and Public Interest, Day 1, post 2

Global Congress for IP and Public Interest, Day 1, post 2

By AfroTwiga   Monday, December 09, 2013   No comments:

Having calmed down significantly after the slightly embarrassing error of the morning session (see the corrected posting here), this Leo has enjoyed the afternoon sessions at the Global Congress on IP and the Public Interest.

Embarrassed Leo
(Photo: Neils Wolmarans)

Another Leo, Dr. Ncube, hosted a roundtable on publicly funded research. This after a representative from NIPMO (South Africa’s National Intellectual Property Management Office) discussed the South African Intellectual Property Rights from Publicly Financed Research and Development Act (No. 51 of 2008). The entire discussion serves to remind that Bayh-Dole-type legislation is a hot topic of discussion in a variety of African countries, Kenya included (see, e.g., here). 

As an aside, it is interesting to recall that NIPMO hosted the Creating and Leveraging IP in Developing Countries (CLIPDC) conference in Durban just two weeks ago (previous posts here and here). CLIPDC had a significantly different feel compared with this Global Congress – the former had speakers from large multi-national corporations and the European and US Patent Offices, whereas the latter has no such speakers (or attendees for that matter). A few overlapping attendees are notable (Doctors Without Borders being one), but it’s significant and admirable that NIPMO is making an effort to communicate with both crowds.

A subsequent session discussed Common Property. Dr. Tesh Dagne (Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Law, Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops, B.C.) described Geographic Indications from the Ethiopian and Ghanaian perspective. He observed that having a legislative framework, as challenging as it is to get one, is only a first step. Implementing the framework takes significant government resources in administration, verification, and other supporting infrastructure. Also recall that the oft-cited example of protecting Ethiopian Coffee as a GI involved substantial outside expertise: “The Initiative secured financial support from the Department for International Development (DFID) of the United Kingdom, technical advice from a Washington-based non-governmental organization (NGO), Light Years IP, and legal assistance from an American law firm, Arnold and Porter.” (Source: WIPO website). It’s certainly not possible for every potential holder of a GI to secure such assistance.

Closing the day was a session on “Realities of Collaborative IP in Africa.” It was helpfully mentioned that Africa is not a country (this Leo has personally disavowed several Californians of such misinformation), and that innovation in Africa is largely not “frontier innovation” – but rather it is borne of basic necessities that speak to the daily struggles of Africans, such as transporting water. This Leo points to the M-Pesa mobile money transfer system, replicas of which are still largely (and frustratingly) not available in Developed countries, as a ground-breaking system worthy of the “frontier innovation” label.  M-Pesa was not itself patented, but there are currently hundreds (literally) of US patent applications directed to aspects of mobile money transfer. A comment from the audience also pointed out that scores of US and European patents [but still far too few] have Africans as inventors.

Stay tuned for tomorrow, which will focus on scenarios developed by the OpenAIR project.

Read More