Geographical Indication (GI) options for Ethiopian Coffee and Ghanaian Cocoa

Innovation & Intellectual Property
●
●
consistently assessing initial applications and granting of patents only to
those applications that meet the necessary criteria; and
ensuring that the database of patents is reliable and accessible to the public.
The evidence from this research suggests that quality of delivery on both of these
services is, at present, deplorable in many African states. Of particular concern
is the potential impact of these faulty African national patent regimes in relation
to transfer of emerging technologies. (See Chapters 11 and 12 of this volume
on patenting matters in relation to clean energy technology in Mozambique and
Egypt, respectively.) Economic arguments for patent protection are founded on
the need to incentivise research and development (R&D), disclosure of technological
knowledge and facilitation of technology transfer. Such arguments collapse
in the context of societies lacking the capacities to capture and disseminate
technological knowledge. Technology contributes to social welfare, and if there is
no effective transfer of technological knowledge via the patent system, the raison
d’être for the patent system evaporates.
At present, African patent offices seem to be operating on what Drahos calls
a “trust me” mantra (Drahos, 2008). Such trust, to the extent that it exists, would
clearly be misplaced in the case of many of the national contexts surveyed in this
study. African national policy-makers need to pay much more attention to what
is happening in their patent offices. Transnational companies, the biggest users
of the patent system, are happy to have a world in which, at a moment of their
choosing, they can obtain high-value patents at a low cost. To such firms, Africa
is at present a highway, with no speed limits, on which applications are rushed to
patent offices. Business actors encourage the speeding up of the work of patent
offices, and reductions in the cost and quality of the application processes (Geller,
2003; Jensen et al., 2005).
There is therefore a clear need to, inter alia, utilise the teeming number of
African science graduates to fill some of the gaps in the examination modalities.
There is also an urgent need to improve the information technology facilities at
African patent offices. Much of the scientific information contained in African
patent applications is at present not electronically available to stakeholders.
The result is that market monopolies are being granted to foreign and domestic
patent-holders in exchange for nothing in terms of transfer or dissemination of
crucial innovative knowledge. Patent offices are supposed to facilitate interactions
between manufacturers, inventors and broader society. The offices are sustained
not just by inventors but also by society, and therefore they owe a duty to society.
When patent offices give short shrift to examination of applications, and fail to
collate and publicly disseminate the patent application information they possess,
they have clearly taken sides with the inventor.
242