Dr. Desmond Oriakhogba is a Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria and a Senior Lecturer in the School of Law at the University of Venda, South Africa. He obtained his LLB and LLM degrees from the University of Benin. Oriakhogba has a PhD in commercial law, with focus on intellectual property (IP) and competition law, from the University of Cape Town (UCT).

Desmond was a visiting researcher in the Centre for Law, Technology and Society, Law Faculty, University of Ottawa, Canada in 2018 as a Queen Elizabeth Scholar with Open AIR. He is an independent consultant with he World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). He has presented in a number of conferences and participated in diplomatic sessions, such as the 38th Session of the WIPO-SCCR and the 16th WIPO-WTO Colloquium for teachers of IP. 

Desmond is the author of Copyright, Collective Management Organisations and Competition in Africa: Regulatory Perspectives from Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya (Juta, 2021) and co-author or Intellectual Property Law in Nigeria: Emerging Trends, Theories and Practice (Paclerd Press, 2021).

QES-AS Research

Dr. Desmond Oriakhogba’s research explored the empowerment, innovation, entrepreneurship, and intellectual property (IP) dynamics at play in the work of a group of women beadworkers participating in the Woza Moya project of the Hillcrest AIDS Centre Trust in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The study found that open, collaborative, and inclusive innovation practices, and social entrepreneurship modalities, appeared to generate significant empowerment for the craftspeople, regardless of the fact that the IP system does not offer women easily accessible economic benefits. Inclusive innovation and social entrepreneurship thus appear, in this case, to be effective mechanisms for working around the “IP gender gap”. To read more about these research findings, please read his Open AIR Working Paper here.