Uganda Registration Services Bureau (URSB) has urged inventors, designers, developers and authors to consider protecting their skillful and impressive innovations by means of copyright or patents.
These skillful individuals in the intellectual space were earnestly urged to put first the idea of protecting their creations in order to shield them from being hijacked by malicious elements.
This crucial plea was made by the Registrar General and Executive Director of URSB, Ms. Mercy Kainobwisho on October 20th, while delivering her keynote speech during the 5th annual KTA Symposium at Speke Resort Munyonyo.
It was a two-day symposium, which ran from October 20th, to 21st, tailored under the theme; “How Intellectual Property, Digital Trade and 41R can can facilitate an inclusive and robust digital economy”, with major focus put on discussing Uganda’s trajectory to achieving National Development Plan (NDP) III goals.
Organised under the auspices of KTA advocates (formely Karuhanga, Tabaro & Associates), the event attracted a number of keynote speakers, panelists, high end government policy makers, permanent secretaries, heads of government parastatals, economists, lawyers, representatives from civil society organizations, finance and planning sector and academicians whose participation was vital in discussing the issues at hand.
Ms. Kainobwisho clearly stated that whereas in academia it is publish or perish, in the protection or registration space, the slogun is you “innovate, protect, or perish”
She underlined that failure to protect one’s intellectual rights is a great risk which in some cases culminates into a horrible blackout, leading to the loss of one’s ideas to unscrupulous and malignant elements.
“If you don’t register your creations, you lose out because the world is so smart. As you project your idea on social media, it moves so fast, before you know it somebody has come to protect it. The world is so smart, as you put your creation on social media, someone is rushing to register it, ” Ms. Kainobwisho said.
The Executive Director, who was forthright in her assertions also urged inventors to consider starting innovation spaces which are selflessly fortified through the protection infrastructure put in place by URSB.
She also called upon all players in both private and public sectors to put in place comprehensive mechanisms to regulate issues of ownership, such that intellectual rights of individual innovators within companies and agencies are recognized and protected.
“At institutional level, the public sector and private sector, you need to put in place intellectual property strategies or policies with in your institution that regulates issues of ownership, issues of commercialization, even benefits sharing, ” Ms. Kainobwisho asserted.
Nevertheless, she stressed that the protection of intellectual property can be done at the national level through intellectual property offices, which are grounded under URSB in Uganda, while beyond the borders, protection is through the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization, for which Uganda is a subscriber.
In the quest by inventors to shield their intellectual rights from encroachment by malignant elements, Ms. Kainobwisho urged stakeholders to seek assistance from experts in the protection arena like lawyers, financial advisors and economists, such that right steps in the right direction are taken as far as protection of literally rights is concerned.
Most importantly, she highlighted that protection beyond Africa is globally done through the World Intellectual Property Organization which has over 130 states, of which Uganda is also a member.
Note should be taken that intellectual property rights are also cordified in Ugandan laws, chiefly the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act 2006, which provides for the fortification of literary, scientific and artistic intellectual works and their neighbouring rights.
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