The DTI office complex in Pretoria
Photo by: Duane Daws/Creamer Media
The Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC), an agency of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), has been holding talks with the Department of Higher Education about establishing a national Intellectual Property (IP), or Innovation, Academy, reported CIPC Executive Manager: Innovation and Creativity Nomonde Maimela on Wednesday. She was speaking at a function to celebrate World Intellectual Property Day at the Innovation Hub in Pretoria.
She stressed that these talks were in their early stages. The proposed academy would be a large innovation/incubator complex, apparently inspired, or partly inspired, by such a complex now operating in Russia. The intent would be to concentrate as much as feasible of the country’s IP development in “one big place”.
The idea is that such a concentration would accelerate IP development in the country by bringing hitherto widely scattered innovators into proximity with each other. “We can get where we want to go faster when we are working together,” she affirmed.
“IP is [currently] all over [the place],” she highlighted. “The DTI … is mandated to lead policy in this area. … The success of what we are doing in the IP space is dependent on our success … in collaborating.”
“South Africa … [has a] very fragmented IP [environment] … [with] pockets all over government,” pointed out CIPC Commissioner Rory Voller. Involved with IP development and protection are the DTI, the Department of Science and Technology (DST), the Department of Health, among others. “We need to centralise it.”
“Africa has many challenges,” he emphasised. “A lot of challenges can be overcome if we as a continent can understand the IP situation and use the [global] innovation and IP system.”
“We ought to educate, to raise awareness, so you are comfortable talking about IP,” asserted Maimela. “Not all of us know about this thing, especially the youth. … There is a whole [IP] value chain. Once you register [your patent or design] with the CIPC, you have to ask: how do I commercialise this? It is like we are a team in relay, passing the baton one to another. We need to elevate our country. South Africans are very innovative, very inventive. We are a very inventive nation.”
(The Innovation Hub, which hosted and was one of the sponsors of the World Intellectual Property Day celebration, is an agency of the Gauteng provincial government, not the national government. It is also currently regarded as the leading science park in Africa. The other sponsors were the DST’s National Intellectual Property Management Office and biotechnology association AfricaBio.)