Event Brings Business Perspective To Creating, Leveraging IP In Developing Countries

An event being held in Durban, South Africa next week will bring the expertise of global and local businesses, governments, academics and others to the issues of harnessing foreign intellectual property rights as well as creating local IP rights.

The event, Creating and Leveraging Intellectual Property in Developing Countries, will be held from 17-20 November. Information about the conference is available here.

Speakers include South African Trade Minister Rob Davies and Minister of Science and Technology Derek Hanekom, as well as other top national officials.

According to an event press release, scheduled international speakers include:  Professor Robert Langer (Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT) – perhaps the most accomplished engineer in the world, with over 800 patents; Professor Dennis Liotta (co-inventor of Emtricitabine, the most widely prescribed medicine for the treatment of HIV); Tatiana Saribekian (president of Domain Russian Investments in Moscow, who has successfully pioneered co-operation agreements between the Russian government and US venture capital); a videoconference with leaders of patent offices from the BRIC countries, e.g., Boris Simonov (Russian Patent Office) and Chaitanya Prasad (India Patent Office); James Pooley, deputy director general at the World Intellectual Property Organization; and numerous industry lawyers and executives.

Among the panel topics are: the value of patents and a corporate view of what makes a quality patent; initiatives from BRICS patent offices; models for leveraging IP in developing countries; lessons from global entrepreneurs; moving from a resource to a knowledge-based economy; innovation and healthcare; using corporate IP for new ventures in developing economies; technology transfer; a look at recent global patent cases; building a management team; and perspectives from the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and computer/software industries. A special panel will be held on traditional knowledge, a topic of significant debate as South Africa works toward passage of new law.

The conference is organised by the South Africa Department of Science & Technology, the Companies & Intellectual Property Commission, and the National IP Management Office (part of Department of Science & Technology).

[Note: This article was originally produced for local-pharma-production.net, a joint project of the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany, GIZ, UNCTAD and UNIDO.]