Events

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 Open African Innovation Research (Open AIR) Network recently hosted officials from South Africa’s Department of Science, Technology, and Innovation (DSTI) at the Centre...

Khadiga Hassan The Department of Science and Innovation and the South African National Research Foundation (DSI/NRF) Trilateral Chair in Transformative Innovation, the 4IR and Sustainable...

Caroline Wanjiru Muchiri On Friday 1st March 2024, a group of individuals drawn from various sectors gathered at the University of Johannesburg Business School to...

By Victor Nzomo In the midst of two decades of TRIPS and three decades of openness, more than 400 delegates from over 50 countries converged...

By Uchenna Ugwu How can “user rights” and exceptions to copyright be used most effectively to ensure access to knowledge for all? This question is...

Researchers from the Open African Innovation Research (Open AIR) network have been awarded $2.5 million CAD through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council’s Partnership Grants program...

Information communication technologies (ICT) can play a crucial role in promoting development, making societies more just, equitable, and inclusive of marginalized communities. To see how, some of the brightest young researchers from the “global South” met with established field leaders at the IDRC and COSTECH-sponsored 2016 CPRsouth conference in Zanzibar.

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.

By Charlotte Galvani and Jeremy de Beer Negotiations toward a new international treaty on pandemic preparedness and response have failed to reflect a rights-based consensus...