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

Innovation & Intellectual Property
5. Conclusions
The evidence outlined in the previous two sections of this chapter – the legislative
and regulatory analysis in Section 3 and the UCT and Wits case study findings in
Section 4 – suggest that the research landscape for the two universities studied
(and potentially for other South African research universities and public research
entities) is experiencing a period of transition. The transition would seem to be
from a more purely research orientation to more mixed research and innovation
orientation.
The IPR-PFRD Act of 2008 is a primarily a patent act, not an omnibus piece
of legislation for publicly funded innovation. The Act is therefore part of an innovation
puzzle, in which the roles and contributions of various actors (DHET, the
DST, ASSAf, universities and industry) are shifting from the historically more linear
contributions to research towards a form of research-innovation interconnectedness
or entanglement, to use the terminology of Hanauske et al., (2007). The
DST’s initiative, via the Act, to promote and regulate the patenting of publicly
funded research seems clearly to be prompting behaviour. At the same time,
global trends in publishing are raising philosophical and ecosystem questions in
South Africa about how to maximise the value of academic publication output –
as evidenced by the aforementioned change of approach at ASSAf (with the support
of the DST and DHET), and the adoption by Wits of the Berlin Declaration.
Both the patenting and scholarly publishing environments in South Africa are
thus in a state of flux.
While the evidence gathered by this research project suggests that there may
have been an initial chilling effect on scholarly publishing following introduction
of the Act in 2008, as well as a rearranging of industry finance for university
research and increased emphasis on university-level IP policy and practice,
it would appear that significant amounts of successful adaptation have occurred.
The provisions of the Act and Regulations require, and appear to have prompted,
investments in increased IP management capacity at state level and at the two
universities studied. Further system-building and legal-regulatory mechanisms
are likely still required, in order for the DST, TIA, NIPMO, universities and industry
to create, and adapt to, the new rules of the game. There is also evidence that
the scholarly publishing landscape is beginning to shift, based on new thinking
about academic journal accreditation, OA publishing and financial incentives for
scholarly publishing. The whole system of knowledge production is in motion.
At the same time, the human and financial infrastructure to support patenting of
university-based R&D is slowly unfurling. This system change has the potential to
reset the “publish or perish” approach to a mixed “patent, publish, commercialise”
and “publish and socialise” approach.
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