Creation of Unified Arab Patents Office Dependent on Participation of Arab Governments
07 Apr 2003The Regional Forum on Intellectual Property for the Africa and Middle East Regions continued its activities in Johannesburg, South Africa, by discussing several more documents presented by IP experts from Europe, Africa and the Arab region.
A press conference was held in conjunction with the forum in which Dr. Alistair Reuters from South Africa spoke, in addition to Dr. Ango Cooper, President of the European Patents Office, Limon Barmelow from the UK Patents Office and Dr. Mazondi Shiramu, the Executive Director of the African Patents Office.
The creation of a unified Arab patents office was raised at the forum along with the possibility of benefiting from the experiences of Europe and Africa in this field. Speaking on this topic, Dr. Mazondi Shiramu said that the necessity of creating such offices must be highlighted for governments, pointing out that the African Patents Office was established incorrectly at the beginning because it focused on the technical and organizational aspects, and ignored the political aspect.
He elaborated that after seven years of the office’s creation, it was apparent that politicians needed to be invited to contribute to the office’s activities. This was followed by a ministerial committee in the Ministers Council for the affairs of the African Patents Office. This in turn led to an increased awareness by politicians in the governmental sector in intellectual property (IP) issues, in addition to the contribution of financial and moral support by African governments in the IP field throughout the African continent.
Shiramu pointed out that if an Arab patents office is created, then the politicians (namely governments) need to be invited to participate in the formulation and establishment of the project until it is fully integrated and therefore can avoid the shortcoming that the African Patents Office went through.
The Arab Society for Intellectual Property (ASIP) representative Mr. Mustafa Nasser Eddin thanked the European Patents Office for its efforts in supporting patents registration offices in the Arab countries, and pointed to the results of a workshop held by the European Patents Office in collaboration with ASIP and Abu-Ghazaleh Intellectual Property (AGIP) in Beirut, that are currently being implemented.
Nasser Eddin expressed the necessity of African – Arab cooperation in this area since half the Arab countries lie in the African continent and there are ties between related parties as developing nations which facilitates the exchange of expertise and knowledge.
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