The Kenyan Government, in recognition of the socio-economic value of biotechnological inventions and technology transfer, has called for greater emphasis on the Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs).
Kenya’s Minister for Trade and Industry has underscored the importance of IPRs as a tool for national development.
Mr. Nicholas Biwott stressed the role of IPR regimes as instruments for protecting the country’s investments in research and promoting innovation as well as industrial growth.
There is a need to incorporate elements of IPR as a tool to inspire human capital formation, knowledge diffusion and technological innovations necessary for national development,¡± said the Minister.
The Minister was speaking during the official launching of the National Consultative Meeting on Needs Assessment and Priority Setting in Biotechnology and Intellectual Property Rights’ held in Nairobi recently.
The meeting, which was co-sponsored by the Kenya Industrial Property Institute (KIPI) and the Biotechnology Trust Africa, attracted more than 60 participants, including researchers, policy-makers and farmers.
The participants unanimously agreed that awareness creation should be fostered in order to create awareness in biotechnology and IPR.
It was agreed that in order to foster development in biotechnology, the Government has to create an appropriate environment by putting in place policies, legal and administrative structures.
At present, the Government has made positive strides towards achieving this objective. For example, in the administrative structures, the government passed the new Industrial Property Act 2001, which establishes the Kenya Industrial Property Institute as a body corporate with effect from May 1, 2002.
The new Act encompasses compulsory licensing and parallel importation of essential products.
Despite the huddles in IPR, various measures have been put in place to include traditional knowledge and folklore in the Intellectual property rights regimes.
Though previously IPRs were available predominantly for inanimate inventions, currently there is a general move to bring animate biotechnological innovations under the patenting system, an issue that has been the subject of global controversy over the last decade.
Due to major pitfalls within the patenting systems, many countries, particularly the developing ones, are yet to put in place regimes of protecting animate inventions.
Some are already exploring the option of developing Sui-Generis System as provided for under article 27-3(B) of the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement instead of the patenting systems.
To many African countries, the current intellectual property system fails to recognise traditional knowledge and indigenous innovations. As a result, local genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge and innovations are commercially exploited without appropriate or equitable recompense to the custodians of the resources.
Kenya is one of the countries in Africa that has made great strides in the development of intellectual property regimes.
Currently, there are four main legislative instruments in operation with respect to IPRs aimed at providing intellectual property protection in the areas of human endeavours, including patenting of carefully isolated, purified and fully disclosed genes.
The Government has increased personnel at the KIPI and trained four at masters degree level in Intellectual Property.
The Minister reiterated his Ministry’s commitment in ensuring that IPRs in the field of biotechnology are given maximum protection, while at the same time ensuring that enjoyment of the rights holders does not impair the rights of the general public to access essential products and services
The meeting resolved that in order to maintain a competitive edge, there is a need to increase intellectual property rights awareness to promote creativity among research institutions, universities and other educational institutions.
Meanwhile, Prof Norah Olembo, the managing director of KIPI, has called for the formation of draft teams to assist researchers in drafting applications.
Drafting is going to be a headache in biotechnology and we must establish technology transfer offices,¡± she said.
Prof Olembo said the new law takes cognisance of the fact that an invention belongs to the inventor and that the inventor must be respected for that.
According to Prof Olembo, the name of the inventor has to be included and the new law calls upon institutions to obey this.
Institutions cannot callously come and claim the invention without honouring the inventor, said Prof.Olembo.