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.
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| 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.
