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Book:  ‘Intellectual Property and Innovation Law in Kenya and Africa: Transferring Technology for Sustainable Development’

Author: Prof Ben Sihanya

Publisher: Sihanya Mentoring and Innovative Lawyering

Reviewer: David Aduda

Intellectual property is increasingly taking centre-stage in scholarship, public communication, innovation and business because we live in a knowledge economy. Societies no longer thrive on the physical strength of the agrarian era or pure extraction of natural resources that fired the industrial revolution, but on intellectual outputs.

Information is right at the heart of intellectual enterprise and this has been stimulated by the emergence and dominance of digital technology. Management guru Peter Drucker foresaw this more than a half a decade ago when he posited that those who will survive in the future would be knowledge and not manual workers. That has since come to pass and the reality is now with us.

Discussions around intellectual property, however, are still confined to the academia, research institutions and elite business cycles. Publications on the subject are scant and the few available are high-pitch and hardly accessible to general readers. This is particularly hurting professions like law, media, business, innovation and the arts, where intellectual property is decidedly critical.

The book under review, authored by a University of Nairobi law scholar, offers a robust but simplified exposition of intellectual property and related concepts, explaining its application in various fields such as law, literature, media, art, industry, business, innovation, among others. Protecting intellectual property rights is a legal and scholarly pursuit as much as it is a business imperative.

PROTECTING CREATIVITY

Intellectual property is defined as the recognition, protection and promotion of the work of the produce of the mind; of human creativity embodied in tangible form. It is divided into two broad areas namely; copyright and related rights; and industrial property that comprises patent, trade secret, trade mark, utility model, and others. Copyright refers to a set of exclusive rights enjoyed by the author or creator of an original work, including right to reproduce, distribute or adapt the work.

The essence of intellectual property is to protect products created out of individual’s knowledge and skills. Creators must earn from the fruit of their labour. Indeed, there is a close nexus between intellectual property and elements such as innovation, industrialisation and sustainable development. Economic development and technological advancements are predicated on innovation and creativity, which must be protected in law and supported by strong instruments for arbitration in cases of disputes.

The book highlights local, regional and global instruments that protect intellectual property. Some of the international organisations are the World Intellectual Property Organisation, World Trade Organisation  and the UN Conference on Trade and Development; the latter regulating matters of intellectual property and technology transfer transactions. Similarly, there are structures at the continental stage that deal with copyright, including the African Regional Intellectual Property Organisation.

Locally, the Kenya Copyright Board (KECOBO) and the Kenya Industrial Property Institute (KIPI) are responsible for enforcement of intellectual property and copyright. The Copyright Act and the Industrial Act, both published in 2001, provide the basic legal framework for handling copyrights, industrial property and trade rights.

Even so, the challenge in our circumstances is lack of information about intellectual property to the extent that most inventions are never patented and therefore vulnerable to exploitation. Moreover, many people breach intellectual property rights inadvertently and expose themselves to litigations and legal sanctions.

The book highlights the breaches of copyright and the attendant defences and remedies. For general purpose, use of copyrighted material for educational purposes without the author’s permission is defendable. Some of the remedies in case of copyright are administrative, civil and criminal.