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

Innovation & Intellectual Property
result of a view taken by governments that placing the outputs of publicly funded
research in the public domain is not sufficient to generate adequate social and
economic benefits from research (Salter and Martin, 2001).
IP regulatory environments influence both the type of research that is publicly
funded and the value that accrues from such research. IP is, therefore, part of
a nation’s public policy relating to the promotion of technological innovation
in a knowledge-based economy. According to Huang (2006), a prevalent view
of the value of a strong IP system, as typified by the US Patent and Trademark
Office (USPTO), is that IP protection “contributes to a strong global economy,
encourages investment in innovation and fosters entrepreneurial spirit” (Huang,
2006, p.12 ).
The question this research study sought to answer was: How do Botswana’s
IP laws, and the policies of institutions doing publicly funded research, potentially
impact on dissemination, utilisation and commercialisation of research output? The
question was premised on the assumption that benefits accruing to a country
from publicly funded research can be influenced by the nation’s IP regime, and the
hypothesis that policies encouraging openness in the dissemination of research
outputs may encourage more active participation in research and innovation.
Context
University research has historically formed the foundation for many of the most
significant technological and industrial advancements (Holly, 2010). However
many ideas and discoveries arising from university research are never fully developed.
Social prosperity and economic growth are stimulated when academic
discoveries are adopted and transformed by entrepreneurs and established corporations,
but many great ideas springing from publicly funded research do not
make the step from the laboratory to the marketplace. Several explanations have
been offered for this problem, including: a lack of funding to scale and commercialise
ideas; a lack of the business expertise required to understand the steps
towards commercialisation; a scarcity of the human capital required to build
start-up companies when needed; and inadequate mentoring and educational
support for new entrepreneurs (Holly, 2010).
It has been persuasively argued that the innovation performance of a country
largely depends on how its universities, PROs and parastatal and industrial
enterprises relate to each other in the creation and use of knowledge, i.e. that the
level and type of interaction between these major actors in a national innovation
system determines the rate and direction of technological progress (OECD, 1997).
The smooth operation of a national innovation system depends on, among other
factors, wide dissemination of knowledge generated by universities and PROs in a
336