Within the context of our GOCIA project (Governing Climate Innovation from Africa), it was an honour to host Prof.
Source: www.iipm.eng.cam.ac.uk
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As UCT hosted the WIPO–WTO Colloquium on IP, teachers and researchers from around the globe gathered to take stock of IP law and policy, and what it means to Africa.
Source: www.news.uct.ac.za
Within the context of our GOCIA project (Governing Climate Innovation from Africa), it was an honour to host Prof.
Source: www.iipm.eng.cam.ac.uk
After progressing through several drafts ( e.g. 2012 and 2013), the AU adopted the final PAIPO statute on 31 January 2016. There has already been a lot of commentary on PAIPO and its draft statutes.* This post merely seeks to highlight the differences between the 2012 and 2013 drafts and the 2016 final statute in tabular format (see below).The most striking changes are to the tenor of the preamble, the characterisation of PAIPO as a specialised AU agency, its organs, the move from prohibiting to permitting reservations and the new provisions added to the final statute (arts 18, 21, 22, 23, 27 and 30). The Preamble now expressly refers to ‘the cultural and socio-economic development of Africa’; recognises ‘international human rights laws and international agreements on sustainable development and the protection of indigenous knowledge’ and refers to the WIPO Development Agenda, Sustainable Development Goals and the AU’s Agenda 2063. This hopefully signals a more development friendly orientation.
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* for example see C Ncube Intellectual Property Policy, Law and Administration in Africa: Exploring Continental and Sub-regional Co-operation (2015) 126 – 139;Y Mupangavanhu ‘African Union Rising to the Need for Continental IP Protection? The Establishment of the Pan-African Intellectual Property Organization’ (2015) 59 Journal of African Law 1–24;C Ncube & E Laltaika E. ‘A new intellectual property organization for Africa?’ (2013) 8(2) Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practice 114-117; Karjiker, S., 2012. ‘Sizing up the ‘ill-conceived PAIPO Draft Statute‘ 6 November 2012. IP Watch Insider Views’.
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Music, Money and Middle Men: Changing Dynamics between Collecting Societies, Rights Holders and the Public
An insightful post on litigation involving the copyright regulator, right holders and collecting societies in Kenya by Victor Nzomo.
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Intellectual Property Policy, Law and Administration in Africa: Exploring Continental and Sub-regional Co-operation
For the past year I have been writing a manuscript entitled Intellectual Property Policy, Law and Administration in Africa: Exploring Continental and Sub-regional Co-operation for publication by Routledge in the third quarter of 2015. This has been a labour of love – hard but enjoyable work writing about things that matter to me – Africa, IP, law, policy and equity. The research that went into this book has been shared on this blog and the Afro-IP blog via my series on IP policies in Africa. Chapter 2 of the book summarises my findings on the state of IP policies in Africa and their import. So in a sense, readers of the blog have walked part of my writing journey with me. Those who haven’t read this series yet can do so here. Once the book is in print, I’ll run a series on this blog discussing its main ideas and arguments.
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International Women’s Day 2015: Celebrating African Women Leaders in Intellectual Property
The long awaited draft policy was gazetted on 4 September 2014 (Government Gazette 36816 Notice 918). Comments on the draft have been invited and will be accepted over the next 30 days.