Countries across the world are recouping huge interest from Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). Kofi Ahovi examines Ghana’s efforts in doing same to maximize wealth.
Ghana has the potential to create more wealth from Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) if only efforts being made to establish and strengthen it are adhered to and executed accordingly.
Presently, the country is struggling to protect its industries, particularly the textile industry, because the designs and cloths used are imitated outside and brought in cheaply to compete with what is produced in the country. Today, out of more than 20 textile industries in Ghana since independence, only five are managing to keep their heads above water.
The US Department of Commerce has also estimated that counterfeit goods, including music, movies, electronic goods, food stuffs, automotive parts and pharmaceuticals, among many other things, account for seven percent of all global trade. This equated to almost US$350 billion in lost revenues and millions of jobs gone wanting worldwide.
Information and Communications Technology (ICT) alone creates about 10 million direct jobs and contributes approximately US$1 trillion to the global economy. With a worldwide piracy rate of around 37%, which stands above 80% on the average for Africa, it means the continent is losing approximately US$1 billion each year because of software pirates.
There are no ready figures for what Ghana could be losing out on intellectual property in general.
Interestingly, African countries, like Ghana, have authentic products, articles and raw materials unique to them; this should pave the way for value addition and marketing in the international market place.
For example, the quality of the Ghanaian chocolate was veritable and compared with any kind from across the world and its cocoa bean is considered to be the best in the world, the Togolese black soap had proved to have magnificent benefits for the skin and quality that beat its competitors and the Ethiopian coffee could also stand the test from any part of the world.
However, such unique products and intellectual property had been left at the mercy of foreign merchants who take advantage to enrich themselves, a situation, when reversed, would enable Africa to play a befitting role in international trade, adding value to raw materials, developing and protection of brands with the enforcement of intellectual property rights.
Ghana seems to be making strides in the development of its intellectual property rights laws to encourage innovation, creativity and intervention and assure inventors and innovators of adequate protection of their property rights. Since the beginning of this year, several activities have been undertaken towards the realization of this initiative.
These include the inauguration of the National IPR Committee in July to assist in the development of an IPR policy for the country. The committee is expected to start work this October. Also, the Trademark and Industrial Designs Acts and their respective regulations have been revised. Three other statutes - Patents, Geographical Indications and Plant Variety Protection - are being revised and are expected to be completed by the end of October.
This would then be followed by the revision of two other Acts - Integrated Circuits and Topographies, and Protection Trade Secrets/Undisclosed Information. The revision of the two Acts is expected to be completed by the end of this year.
IPR awareness programme has begun for focused groups and a seminar was organized for some micro, small and medium scale enterprises in June, this year. It is expected that another two separate seminars would be held for the Arts and Crafts industry and researchers in the universities and research institutions in October and November this year.
Furthermore, preparatory activities have been undertaken for the assessment of training needs of the judiciary and to design the training programme to be implemented by the Judicial Training Institute (JTI). Also, intermediaries for intellectual property information are being identified and, currently, visits have been made to three public universities, namely the University of Ghana, the University of Cape Coast and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), and the research institutions - the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and Cocoa Research Institute, etc.
With the establishment of an IPR, there would be a huge potential for Ghana to increase export income from applying intellectual property tools to the development and marketing of products.
Ghana has the potential to create more wealth from Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) if only efforts being made to establish and strengthen it are adhered to and executed accordingly.
Presently, the country is struggling to protect its industries, particularly the textile industry, because the designs and cloths used are imitated outside and brought in cheaply to compete with what is produced in the country. Today, out of more than 20 textile industries in Ghana since independence, only five are managing to keep their heads above water.
The US Department of Commerce has also estimated that counterfeit goods, including music, movies, electronic goods, food stuffs, automotive parts and pharmaceuticals, among many other things, account for seven percent of all global trade. This equated to almost US$350 billion in lost revenues and millions of jobs gone wanting worldwide.
Information and Communications Technology (ICT) alone creates about 10 million direct jobs and contributes approximately US$1 trillion to the global economy. With a worldwide piracy rate of around 37%, which stands above 80% on the average for Africa, it means the continent is losing approximately US$1 billion each year because of software pirates.
There are no ready figures for what Ghana could be losing out on intellectual property in general.
Interestingly, African countries, like Ghana, have authentic products, articles and raw materials unique to them; this should pave the way for value addition and marketing in the international market place.
For example, the quality of the Ghanaian chocolate was veritable and compared with any kind from across the world and its cocoa bean is considered to be the best in the world, the Togolese black soap had proved to have magnificent benefits for the skin and quality that beat its competitors and the Ethiopian coffee could also stand the test from any part of the world.
However, such unique products and intellectual property had been left at the mercy of foreign merchants who take advantage to enrich themselves, a situation, when reversed, would enable Africa to play a befitting role in international trade, adding value to raw materials, developing and protection of brands with the enforcement of intellectual property rights.
Ghana seems to be making strides in the development of its intellectual property rights laws to encourage innovation, creativity and intervention and assure inventors and innovators of adequate protection of their property rights. Since the beginning of this year, several activities have been undertaken towards the realization of this initiative.
These include the inauguration of the National IPR Committee in July to assist in the development of an IPR policy for the country. The committee is expected to start work this October. Also, the Trademark and Industrial Designs Acts and their respective regulations have been revised. Three other statutes - Patents, Geographical Indications and Plant Variety Protection - are being revised and are expected to be completed by the end of October.
This would then be followed by the revision of two other Acts - Integrated Circuits and Topographies, and Protection Trade Secrets/Undisclosed Information. The revision of the two Acts is expected to be completed by the end of this year.
IPR awareness programme has begun for focused groups and a seminar was organized for some micro, small and medium scale enterprises in June, this year. It is expected that another two separate seminars would be held for the Arts and Crafts industry and researchers in the universities and research institutions in October and November this year.
Furthermore, preparatory activities have been undertaken for the assessment of training needs of the judiciary and to design the training programme to be implemented by the Judicial Training Institute (JTI). Also, intermediaries for intellectual property information are being identified and, currently, visits have been made to three public universities, namely the University of Ghana, the University of Cape Coast and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), and the research institutions - the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and Cocoa Research Institute, etc.
With the establishment of an IPR, there would be a huge potential for Ghana to increase export income from applying intellectual property tools to the development and marketing of products.
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