Business players in South Africa must become far more aware of the importance of IP in the globalised economy. Sooner or later, about 4 000 registered patents from foreigners in South Africa will become effective – and “one should not wait long as they will soon be kicked out of the market”.
This was the message meted out by Professor Joseph Straus, NIPMO-UNISA IP Chair, IP and Innovation Management at the University of South Africa, speaking at the CLIPDC Conference in Durban.
The IP system in South Africa was being under-utilised, probably because the system was cumbersome, Straus says – but he stressed that more use should be made of it.
Citing statistics from 2011, but which were still pertinent today, he says the South African patent office currently has “some 5 296” registered patents.
“Of those, 1 000 are of South African origin. So a country of 50-million people has 1 000 registered patents in its own country.”
Straus compares these figures with those cited during the conference on Korea, which, he says, started at a low level but which had built up to having about 120 000 patent applications in the country – “their own patent applications and not from abroad. The most important thing is to make business aware of the importance of IP in the globalised economy.”
Straus, who is also Professor of Law at Universities of Munich and Ljubljana and Professor of George Washington Law School, says a vital question to ask is how much co-operation is going on between universities and industry in South Africa.
“Another question is how much are patents owned by public-funded institutions really commercialised?”
In his address, Strauss provided a number of measures which should be considered in South Africa in order to put IP more under the spotlight in terms of business.
These include:
* Make private business aware of IP importance in the globalized economy;
* Provide incentives for creativity – such as tax benefits;
* Consider special rules on employees’ inventions;
* Incentivise internal systems for rewarding creative minds in companies – for improvement proposals and so on;
* Start developing necessary foundations for the examinations systems – less for examination reasons than for generating a sufficiently broad layer of technically skilled patent specialists;
* Provide necessary funds and human resources for monitoring the fate (infringement, use etc) of publicly funded patents;
* Provide statistics on IP court cases, not only on court decisions but also in- and out-of-court settlements;
* Exploit all available possibilities offered by the law enforce – orient yourself on case law of other countries – before considering changes and amendments; and
* Consider the introduction of a grace period and research exemption of a general type, not only of Roche Bolar type safe haven.
Article courtesy of Sue Segar, reporting from the CLIPDC Conference in Durban.
