Jeremy de Beer

Frameworks for Analysing African Innovation: Entrepreneurship, the Informal Economy and Intellectual Property

This chapter reviews conceptual frameworks to understand and measure innovation, and then outlines links between innovation and the concepts of entrepreneurship, the informal economy (IE) and intellectual property (IP). The review suggests that the time is ripe for African policy-makers to seek more holistic approaches to facilitating innovation and, in turn, to fostering socio-economic development in African nations.

Network Governance of Biofuels

This paper analyzes the multi-level, networked governance of biofuels by surveying a wide variety of legal regulatory measures, including domestic laws and public policies, private intellectual property rights and international trade rules.

Copyright and Innovation in the Networked Information Economy

This working paper examines several priority issues pertaining to copyright and innovation. Intellectual property rights (IPRs) can facilitate innovation if an appropriate balance is struck between sufficient protection and free competition. Canada’s laws governing IPRs are recognized to be very good, but could be improved. With respect to copyright in the digital environment, three priority issues to deal with are implementing treaty provisions regarding TPMs, clarifying intermediaries’ liabilities and obligations and enabling greater use of flexibilities and limitations. Canada should follow the example set by Israel and adopt a ‘wait-and-see’ approach toward TPMs, in order to avoid entrenching a potentially inappropriate regulatory regime for technologies with an uncertain economic and cultural future, or a middle-ground model with circumvention prohibitions tied to infringement should be adopted. Intermediaries should be required to assist in online copyright enforcement under a ‘notice-and-notice’ system that requires them to inform customers of alleged infringements, and policy-makers should closely follow and participate in discussions about self-regulation. Canada’s statutory system for fair dealing should be amended to take account of technological, cultural and commercial realities and to create new opportunities for economic growth and innovation, while stakeholders simultaneously work together to design best practices online.

The Intellectual Property Treaty Landscape in Africa, 1998 to 2015

Intellectual property (IP) policy is an important part of economic growth and human development. International commitments harmonized in intellectual property treaties exist in tension with local needs for flexibility. Using a novel data collection and visualization method, this paper tracks the adoption of IP treaties on the continent of Africa over a 130-year period from 1885-2015. Our analysis highlights empirical data at four distinct points in time coinciding with events in African and international IP law (1935, 1965, 1995, and 2015). We explore relevant historical and legal aspects of each period to assess the evolution of the IP treaty landscape in context. Our findings show that treaties now saturate the IP policy space throughout the continent, limiting the ability to locally tailor approaches to knowledge governance.

Open innovation and knowledge appropriation in African micro and small enterprises (MSEs)

This article seeks enhanced understanding of the dynamics of open innovation and knowledge appropriation in African settings. More specifically, the authors focus on innovation and appropriation dynamics in African micro and small enterprises (MSEs), which are key engines of productivity on the continent. The authors begin by providing an expansion of an emergent conceptual framework for understanding intersections between innovation, openness and knowledge appropriation in African small-enterprise settings. Then, based on this framework, they review evidence generated by five recent case studies looking at knowledge development, sharing and appropriation among groups of small-scale African innovators. The innovators considered in the five studies were found to favour inclusive, collaborative approaches to development of their innovations; to rely on socially-grounded information networks when deploying and sharing their innovations; and to appropriate their innovative knowledge via informal (and, to a lesser extent, semi-formal) appropriation tools.

Traditional Knowledge Governance Challenges in Canada

This book chapter canvasses the fragmented nature of jurisdiction over traditional knowledge in Canada. It relates traditional knowledge governance issues to the operations of Canadian federalism and relationships among Aboriginal Peoples and Canada’s federal, provincial and territorial governments. The authors discuss the conceptual nature of traditional knowledge, identify practical challenges associated with its protection, investigate legal jurisdictional issues with implementing legislation or other measures protecting traditional knowledge, and inventory policy initiatives to address traditional knowledge. They propose that federal, provincial and territorial governments can only meaningful engage with Aboriginal Peoples about traditional knowledge if these governments themselves engage in a process of collaborative or cooperative federalism. Doing so is one step toward the fulfilling these governments’ duty to not just consult but negotiate with Aboriginal Peoples toward treaties that govern rights to traditional knowledge that are consistent with Canada’s international obligations under Article 31 of the United Nations Declaration of Rights on Indigenous Peoples and other instruments.

Copyright and education in Africa: Lessons on African copyright and access to knowledge

Tobias Schonwetter 1 Post-Doctoral Fellow, Intellectual Property Research Unit, Faculty of Law, University of Cape Town, South Africa Jeremy de Beer Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, Canada Dick Kawooya Senior Lecturer, School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, USA Achal Prabhala Researcher and writer, Bangalore, India