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

Effects of the South African IP Regime on Generating Value
interviewees included strong research and publishing records and evidence of
patent holdings. Identification of interviewees was done in consultation with relevant
academic management at UCT and Wits, and with reference to the universities’
research and innovation reports. The data were collected through document
analysis and through interviews with nine key informants at UCT and Wits
University: five researcher-inventors and four research-IP managers. The four
research-IP manager interviewees were drawn from the UCT Research Contracts
and IP Services office (RCIPS) and from Wits Commercial Enterprise (Pty) Ltd.
(Wits Enterprise). The data were analysed thematically in order to determine
the common and distinctive perceptions, at each university, of the extent of the
impact of the Act on generating benefit from publicly funded research.
2. Conceptual framework
The study was grounded in several conceptual assumptions, as outlined in the
subsections which follow.
IP protection
IP is created when new knowledge or creative work enjoys protection under common
law or acquires a proprietary right pursuant to legal frameworks governing
patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets. Commercialisation of IP occurs
when the value of new knowledge or creative work is realised in the marketplace
through an IP vehicle that results in financial return (Geuna and Nesta, 2006). In
a recent review of the IP environment in the UK, Hargreaves (2011) states that
the UK IP framework has a tendency to act as a significant drag against innovation
and economic growth. The Hargreaves Report finds this to be true not just
within the creative works domain but increasingly and extensively with respect to
business and academic innovation. South Africa, as a former British colony and
a member of the Commonwealth, has an IP framework that, in many respects,
reflects that of the UK. It follows, then, that some of the problems identified by
Hargreaves with the existing UK IP framework may also characterise the South
African context.
Central to this study’s focus on connections between IP protection, commercialisation
and research publishing is the contention that IP protection has the
potential to limit access to knowledge (A2K), via explicit and/or implicit barriers,
and that such limits on A2K undermine the balancing mechanisms inherent in
the notion of IP protection. IP protection is not supposed to stifle A2K. In extreme
instances, the protection of research findings via IP can constitute knowledge
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