Is Creativity and Innovation All About Intellectual Property?
In the recently concluded ‘African Ministerial Conference: Intellectual Property for an Emerging Africa’ organized in part by WIPO (here), one cannot help but think that all roads leading to creativity and innovation are paved with intellectual property (IP) laws and institutions. Put differently, the level of creativity and innovation in a society is dependent solely on how we tinker with and enforce IP laws. This ‘IP parochialism’, as I call it, is manifest in the conference program. Of course, the response would be that the conference was solely about IP and as such there was no need to look beyond IP. This is an erroneous view.
Optimising Benefits from Publicly Funded Research
Published by Open AIRPublication Date: 2014Download: Optimising Benefits from Publicly Funded Research (323)
This 2014 Briefing Note highlights Open AIR research findings on apparent disconnects between...
A Data Commons for Food Security
Agricultural data is globally recognized for its importance in addressing food insecurity. We propose a ‘data commons’, formed through a licensing model that allows farmers to benefit from the datasets to which they contribute.
Access to COVID-19 Vaccines: the Patent Freeze Proposal and a New...
By Chidi Oguamanam and Sarah O’Flaherty
The State of Affairs
As the vaccination rate rises in Canada and other developed nations, developing countries globally continue to record an...
Open Data’s Effect on Food Security
Agricultural data is a vital resource in the effort to address food insecurity. This data is used across the food-production chain. For example, farmers rely on agricultural data to decide when to plant crops, scientists use data to conduct research on pests and design disease resistant plants, and governments make policy based on land use data. As the value of agricultural data is understood, there is a growing call for governments and firms to open their agricultural data.
Shifting Horizons Conference
By Michael Dao
On March 28th, 2019, the University of Ottawa
hosted the Shifting
Horizons: Managing Your Research Data Conference, a day-long series of
workshops for researchers. I...
Evidence-based Intellectual Property Policymaking
Authored by: Jeremy de Beer
Abstract: Governments have long been interested in making intellectual property (IP) policy based on sound evidence. There is a large...
L’Afrique à l’épreuve de la Covid-19
Par Abdelhamid Benhmade
En quatre semaines, la situation est devenue extrêmement alarmante sur le continent africain. « Les populations africaines vivent l’un des pires épisodes pandémiques...
Chapitre 2: Cadres d’analyse de l’innovation africaine : l’entrepreneuriat, l’économie informelle...
Jeremy de Beer, Izabella Sowa et Kristen HolmanDate de publication: septembre 2017Télécharger: Chapitre 2: Cadres d’analyse de l’innovation africaine : l’entrepreneuriat, l’économie informelle et...
Reconciling Copyright with Creativity: New Insights from 2018 Conferences (Part II)
By Helen Chuma-Okoro and Nicole Tumaine
This is part two of Helen Chuma-Okoro and Nicole Tumaine’s blog post on the insights retained from 2018 conferences,...










