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

Effects of the South African IP Regime on Generating Value
has conducted a campus-wide education and awareness campaign, and runs seminars
aimed at creating awareness about the Act and demonstrating UCT’s compliance
arrangements. According to an RCIPS staff member interviewed, there are
minimal negative impacts on IP commercialisation under the Act, but implementation
has presented practical challenges. For instance, researchers interested in
socialising their ideas at conferences or through publication may face constraints
or delays because of the prioritisation of patent filing. The interviewee said that,
with proper planning, however, a patent application could be filed prior to conference
presentations or publication. RCIPS strives to assist UCT’s academics and
researchers to “fit IP protection seamlessly into the publication or thesis submission
process” (RCIPS interviewee, 2012).
However, in the RCIPS interviewee’s opinion, it was not necessarily ideal
for commercialisation of research to be mandated by legislation. While it was
appreciated that the intent of the legislation was to more concretely motivate a
reflective approach to commercialisation by publicly funded institutions, some
research lends itself more readily to commercialisation, and thus implementation
of the Act has to be reasonable and bear such distinctions in mind. The RCIPS
interviewee also said that other elements of South African IP protection could be
amended to become more conducive to commercialisation. For example, the fact
that South African patents are not substantively examined leads to “commercial
uncertainty, as the claims have not been tested by examination and can only be
contested in court – which is an expensive process” (RCIPS interviewee, 2012).
Funders are understandably hesitant to invest when faced with this state of unpredictability
over the future of a patented invention.
Another concern voiced by the RCIPS interviewee related to the lack of funding
for development of early-stage IP:
This [early-stage funding] is scarce and significantly impedes actual transfer of
technology. There is a need for development to mature the IP within a university
to fashion it into a commercialisable form [...] I think that there is a need for a
parallel stream of people working on development, rather than research, to focus
on translating research findings into tangible outputs that can be of relevance in
the marketplace. (RCIPS interviewee, 2012)
A UCT researcher-inventor interviewee stated that full funding by industry of
South African university research (necessary for the funder to acquire full rights
to the IP in terms of the Act of 2008) is “uncompetitive and expensive” (UCT
researcher-inventor interviewee, 2012). As a reflection of this sentiment, the
interviewee pointed to a small but significant loss of industry-contracted research
at UCT. The interviewee stated that barriers also arise from the need to seek
NIPMO permissions for certain IP transactions, as per the Act. This requirement
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