非洲的发明家受到不良知识产权制度的束缚

Patenting law in Africa needs to become more effective to better support local entrepreneurs and boost growth, the continent’s innovators have said.

Attendants at the创新Prize for Africa(IPA)事件,供奉的发明者来自非洲countries, toldscidev.netthat they struggle to turn their ideas into business because of weak patenting立法。

Early-career entrepreneurs trying to patent their products in Africa face high legal costs, arbitrary bureaucratic processes and legislative mismatches between countries, they said.

IPA于5月12日至13日在摩洛哥Skhirat举行的为期两天的活动中授予。在今年的十个决赛入围者中，三人有弱或没有intellectual property保护，Pauline Mujawamariya说非洲创新基金会，照顾奖品。

“我看到大师级学生将其版权与研究论文的版权混淆，并获得创新专利。”

摩洛哥FES的Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah大学

2014年IPA获奖者（多哥的Logou Minsob）是非洲知识产权保护不稳定的一个例子。他因他的奖项而获得了奖项Foufoumixmachine, which pounds yam roots into powder in under eight minutes — a process that takes hours if done by hand with a mortar and pestle.

Today, a year after Minsob bagged the US$25,000 prize, cheap imitations of the machine have popped up in Benin and Ghana. Minsob has filed a patent for his product at the African Intellectual Property Organization (AIPO) in Cameroon.

但是，尽管这在19个西非国家提供了保护，但它不包括加纳和尼日利亚。“这很危险，”明斯布说。

在提交时，Minsob不知道只有一种语言的一种申请，他可以在一年之内就可以提交一项国际专利under the World Intellectual Property Organisation’s (WIPO)Patent Cooperation Treaty，覆盖近150个国家。

现在，他必须分别向加纳和尼日利亚提交，并支付额外费用。

会议上的创新者说，围绕专利申请的这些问题阻止了非洲企业家。根据the WIPO2013年，全球颁发了约250万项专利，但非洲的份额仅为0.6％，约有14,900份申请。

In comparison, Asian countries filed 58.4 per cent of all patents, which translates into 1.5 million applications, followed by North America with 23.6 per cent of patents, or 606,000 applications.

Inventors across Africa complain that the patent process is slow, costly and complicated. One stumbling block is that intellectual property rights are often territorial, and laws differ even within the same country. In Tanzania, the island region Zanzibar has different IP laws than the mainland, says MacLean Sibanda, a South African patent lawyer.

由于这种并发症的结果，许多非洲创新者向非洲大陆以外寻求专利保护。摩洛哥程序员穆罕默德（Mohammed）说，现年23岁的阿卜杜拉哈德（Abdelouahad应用程序for online authentication that collects all your passwords and activates them by tapping on the screen. A personal tap is harder to crack than characters, he says.

It took Abdelouahad six months of internet research to figure out how to file a patent in the United States, his market of choice. Eventually, he found a California-based Moroccan lawyer who filed the patent for him for a US$2,500 fee, low for a lawyer but expensive for a young African entrepreneur.

Abdelouahad说：“我们是程序员，我们不知道如何起草应用程序，并且信息不容易访问。”

This year’s award was won by Adnane Remmal, a biotechnology professor at the University Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah in Fes, Morocco. He received the prize for a natural alternative to antibiotics for家畜, which is based on essential oils.

雷玛尔说大多数universities in Africacannot afford to help researchers with their patenting, and that public-private partnerships could be the answer. He is also concerned about a lack of knowledge among potential entrepreneurs, who do not have essential information about patenting.

他说：“我看到硕士学生将其版权置于研究论文的版权上，并获得创新专利。”“学生必须了解这些问题。”

西班达（Sibanda）还认为非洲联盟在加强当地专利法律方面发挥了作用。他说：“他们可以通过与科学和创新部长制定战略，以使非洲IP系统与发展保持一致。”