SECOND LIFE Trademark Rights in Virtual Worlds 2007 WIPO ...

18
DECEMBER 2007
HEALTH RESEARCH
IN AFRICA
Sharing IP Resources to Deliver Results
1. Aimable Twahirwa is also
a participant in the peerto-peer
mentoring
scheme of the
International Federation
of Science Journalist
(WFSJ).
In September 2004, WIPO announced the launch of an innovative interdisciplinary project in six
countries of the Central Africa Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC) and in Colombia. The
project aimed to develop a sustainable model to support health research institutions in developing
countries in protecting and commercializing their research results. Three years on, Rwandan science
journalist, AIMABLE TWAHIRWA, 1 spoke to some of the scientists involved in coordinating the project
in Cameroon and Gabon. He filed this report for WIPO Magazine.
“The move came after the observation that research
institutions in most sub-Saharan countries took no –
or little – consideration of intellectual property (IP)
in their scientific research processes,” said Dr.
Alphonse Emadak, head of the inorganic chemistry
department at Yaoundé University in Cameroon.
As a consequence of not using the IP system, Dr.
Emadak explained, developing country researchers
did not “own” the results of their research, and were
unable to benefit from their commercial exploitation.
High quality results generated by African research
institutions, he said, were siphoned off into
developed countries, with practically no “feedback”
and no income generated by the research.
In order to survive, research institutions needed to
be able to adapt to the newly emerging environment,
characterized by Dr. Emadak as liberalization
at the national level, and globalization at the international
stage.
Networks and hubs
The WIPO project, funded by the Geneva
International Academic Network (GIAN) and other
organizations, developed a model to address the
lack of IP-related capacity in these countries. It was
based on creating networks of R&D institutions supported
by shared “hubs” of IP services. By pooling
resources and using economies of scale, costs could
be kept affordable.
As a result, 22 health research institutions in
Cameroon, Gabon, Republic of Congo, Chad,
Gabon and Equatorial Guinea established a set of
common policies to enable them to share IP services
and to become an R&D network. A parallel project
was also set up in Colombia in Latin America.
“Through this R&D network, central African institutions
participating in this initiative are now sharing
resources to process patent applications and commercialize
research results,” Dr Emadak said.
The project includes four main phases. It began
with audits of the situation and needs in the participating
institutions. In the second phase WIPO developed
and provided training to key staff in the institutions,
covering patent drafting; technology
transfer and licensing; and health research management
and marketing. In the third phase the networks
and IP hubs came into operation. The fourth
phase will be the evaluation of the project and a
strategy to ensure sustainability.
Not all was plain sailing, however. Dr. Mesmin
Ndong Biyo’o, a researcher from the genetically
modified organisms laboratory at the National
Research Institute on Agro-forestry (IRAF – CENAREST)
in Libreville, Gabon, is one of the three IP hub
“agents,” together with Dr. Emadak. During the ten
months since the shared hub began operating, he
said, it had not been easy to convince other researchers
from central African nations about the importance
of protecting their research results. Many
researchers had no idea about IP when the project
was launched, and for most researchers success was
measured not in patents but in the number of scientific
papers published. The project, Dr. Biyo’o explained,
was now encouraging researchers to protect
their research results first before publishing.
Despite the difficulties, the hub, known as SECOVIPI
(Service commun virtuel en propriété intellectuelle –
Virtual Shared IP Service) has been up and running
since January. Among the services it offers are advice
on which research results could be patentable, support
in drafting and filing patents, advice on negotiating licensing
agreements, and on how to use IP to market
health research. WIPO describes the full range of services
envisaged as also including support to encourage
public-private partnerships; marketing the R&D network
and its IP assets; and negotiating funding.