Blog Post

Open AIR’s New and Emerging Researchers Group (NERG) embodies Open AIR’s commitment to the mentorship and development of students and early career researchers. Open...

Earlier this year, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) held a two-day workshop on “Supporting Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises Use the Intellectual Property System in Their Competitive Strategy” at the Academy of Scientific Research and Technology in Cairo, Egypt, which some of our Open AIR NERG members attended. The goal of this meeting was to discuss how to encourage young innovators to protect their inventions by patenting them at the Egyptian Patent Office. The workshop had vibrant and sometimes heated discussions between these innovators and government officials regarding many of the obstacles faced in the patenting process in Egypt.

The WIPO-IGC recently commenced the next installment of its deliberations for a text-based instrument that focuses on the protection of traditional cultural expressions (TCEs), pursuant to its mandate. There are two scheduled forums on TCEs beginning Feb 27-March 3 and to be completed in June 2017, which will round off the Committee’s work for the 2016-17 biennium.

First Stop, the American University in Cairo By the AUC New and Emerging Research Group and Meika Ellis Under the masterful guidance of our North African...

In my previous blog on skills development and innovation at Ghana’s Suame Magazine, I showed how the high level of collaboration and sharing of knowledge and skills within the cluster is contributing to innovation. Further, I provided some preliminary findings on the inability of these artisans’ to keep pace with the changing technology landscape. I also found that few artisans expressed interest in joining or maintaining a membership with local trade associations due to these associations’ inability to implement their key mandate of skills development and facilitation of business for members and firms.

Introduction In 2020, Ethiopia, a country that has faced a refugee crisis primarily because of long-term conflicts, experienced a deadly war that displaced many Ethiopians...

Par Aboubacry Kane Le secteur informel ignoré par le plan de relance économique La pandémie du Covid-19 continue toujours de sévir dans le monde. Après plusieurs...

Par Abdelhamid Benhmade La guerre des vaccins est-elle désormais plus coûteuse que la guerre contre la pandémie ? Sans doute, la production de plusieurs vaccins...

By Bertha Vallejo and Erika Kraemer-Mbula Dr. Bertha Vallejo is an OpenAIR QES fellow with the University of Johannesburg. She analyzes the adoption of Industry...

Too often, scholarly work and debates relating to Intellectual Property (IP) have focused on the protection and profits of the IP holder, as opposed to promoting open-access and the broader interests of the community. In her talk at the University of Ottawa on February 9th, Professor Janewa Osei-Tutu suggested we readjust the lens through which IP innovation is examined, using human development as the standard.