A review of African official IP websites: no.2 Angola

A review of African official IP websites: no.2 Angola

By Anonymous   Monday, July 23, 2012   No comments:

Last year, this little Leo found a bare cupboard in Angola ; neither the copyright office nor the industrial property office had a website. Twelve months later, the cupboard is still empty. 

The only website found on both trips was that owned by the Ministry of Industry www.mingmi.gov.ao, but it carries no information on intellectual property (IP) in Angola. Browsing this site, - as if he understood a word of Portuguese- this Leo came across this news of an ongoing construction of advanced technology centres with the support of the Republic of South Korea. 

Angolans keen to protect the knowledge in its traditional medicine

On other developments, this Leo has also learned that Angola is taking its intangible cultural heritage seriously as reported this month here,  here , here and here  by allAfrica.com.  Here are some excerpts: 

From the first report: "....The protection of knowledge and practice of traditional medicine in the cultural aspect, the protection of knowledge and practice of traditional medicine in the aspect of intellectual property protection and legal mechanisms and the importance of the drafting of the law on the protection of traditional medicine and property rights of traditional knowledge on the agenda."

From the second report: "More than 400 medicinal plants, root samples and other products are displayed to the public in Luena city, eastern Moxico province ahead of the opening of the Regional Forum on national policy on traditional medicine and complementary practices" 

From the third report: ".....Therefore, to ensure the recovery of the traditions of the Angolan people, as part of their cultural heritage, the Executive intends to establish necessary legal tools for promotion of good practice and guarantee equitable access."

In attendance at these events were senior government officials.

Comment

Afro Leo is disappointed that a year on, nothing has changed for Angola - despite sound economic growth and considerable oil revenues.Where a country has a functioning and reasonable website for its IP office, it is foreseeable - although not guaranteed- that it would also be working hard behind the scenes to promote IP or to make the IP system work in the interest of its people.

Both news on the technology centres and traditional medicine raise critical issues in IP or of similar nature, including technology transfer, IP spin-out and intangible cultural heritage protection. It is crucial that the Angolan government or the relevant Ministry show some desire by ensuring that its IP office is seen to be playing an active role in innovation, entrepreneurialship and creativity by going online. Also, by putting the current IP regime into effective use, lessons would be learned and these could be applied to the current projects at hand.

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An opinion summary plus a review of African official IP websites: no.1 Algeria

An opinion summary plus a review of African official IP websites: no.1 Algeria

By Anonymous   Monday, July 16, 2012   No comments:

First, Afro Leo would like to use this opportunity to thank readers for joining with him in sharing moments of excitement as well as enduring despair throughout the A-Z series. On a personal note, this Leo is grateful for the emails and Twitter messages that he received during his tour across this continent, which is endowed with natural beauties and resources; extremely diverse, even within each country, and home to some of the world's fastest growing economies.

It is now just over 12 months since this Leo took on the challenge to tour all 54 countries in Africa -beginning with Algeria  and ending with Zimbabwe - in search of their intellectual property (IP) offices online. Over these months, you would have gathered that each week's conclusion was clearly inconsistent with conclusions drawn from other weeks: one week may be exciting, while another is clouded with despair and/or perhaps, measured, when other factors are put into consideration.

All Afro Leo wanted to experience on this tour was a 'decent' website. ["So what do you mean by a 'decent' website?", Afro Leo asks] Basically, this Leo is thinking of a website which is not only instructive to users --be it IP owners or their representatives-- but also treats them like customers. Another feature which this Leo particularly admires is a functioning database of registered IP rights which generally helps in IP due diligence.

Without naming them, certain countries disappointed -- in particular, those that are well-positioned in economic and social terms, to accrue the benefits of a better tailored but organised IP regime – one or two met the required expectation, and a handful exceeded expectation. But the key observation in the series was the apathy among most members of the two regional IP organisations, OAPI and ARIPO, to ensure their IP offices own and/or maintain a 'decent' website. This, Leo hopes, is not complacency on the part of these member countries or a national office decline due to the existence of the regional system. And, for those that disappointed, one can only speculate as to the reasons why we found no website at all for some and, where we found one for others, it appeared inadequate. Are these offices not just bothered at all to own and/or maintain a decent website? Or is funding and/or human capital an issue?

This Leo is not just aware that you trust computers or IT in general at your peril (see recent examples here and here), but also that having a website is not a panacea for the state of IP in these countries. In addition, we must never lose sight of the fact that advanced economies once had IP offices without websites [Afro Leo thinks this is providing the ammunition of 'unwarranted' excuses or defences and even complacency]; so, perhaps, this Leo might have to make himself a bit more useful by finding out how these advanced economies coped before the advent of the internet [Afro Leo says, "good luck with that"]. Nevertheless, he hopes readers can agree with him that since we now live in the digital era, a website for the IP and business names registry should be seen as a necessity in order to ensure an orderly and fair environment for commerce.

Coming soon: a detailed analysis and consolidation of my findings, but for the moment, what do readers think?

For the European experience on regional IP protection, see here, here and here 

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Algeria: a year on and what has changed?

Last year, we found functioning websites for both the copyright and the  industrial property offices in Algeria. Nothing has changed on National Office of Copyrights and Related Rights’ (ONDA) website apart from visitor numbers to the site which has grown from 601,000 to over 657, 000.

As for the Algerian National Institute of Industrial Property (INAPI), an update is that the domain for this office will soon change from www.inapi.org to www.inapi.dz.

Afro Leo continues to admire how INAPI keeps its users informed with changes, seminars and so on; but he would also like to see either office or both, utilise social media for user interaction.

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