Confessions Of A Privileged Lawyer
I have a confession to make. I plead guilty as charged. I admit that I am a white male establishment lawyer. I practised for 35 years as a partner of a prominent attorneys firm specialising in the field of intellectual property law (“IP”). Thereafter, upon retirement, I became a Professor of IP Law. This makes me a member of that heinous and much vilified group of lawyers who are charged with the crime of wishing to preserve its privileged position and therefore overtly or covertly being against transformation in the legal profession and willing to practice deceit and manipulation in...
Read MoreClean Power Technology Protection
As the pressure on “going green” increases internationally, eyes are turned to the protection of intellectual property and its mechanisms and particularly the question as to whether the World Trade Organization agreement on Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) should include special flexibilities for access and dissemination of environmental sound technologies such as they occur in the fields of health or nutrition and how can this be of benefit? It is argued that the IP system has been associated with some limitations with regards access or spread of technologies and while...
Read MoreFriend or Foe? – Publicly Funded IP
The introduction of the new IPR from Publicly Funded Research and Development Act is a significant milestone in empowering local universities in their negotiations with industry partners around research funding and managing the results flowing out of such research. The importance and value of intellectual property, which until recently was a vague term in the language of most academics, was highlighted and prominence was given to it at all levels of the University. The Technology Transfer Office (TTO) made use of the opportunity to educate academics and to increase the disclosure rate at...
Read MorePublic Outcry Against US Bills Felt Across The Globe
Two related United States Bills were recently the topics of much controversy. Public outcries and widespread online protests were followed by an unprecedented Internet blackout on 18 January 2012. The Internet blackout was supported by the likes of Google, Facebook, Reddit and Wikipedia to name but a few. The blackout was not only supported by the Internet high-and-mighties, but also thousands of lesser known sites rallying their users’ support against the Bills. Such was the nature of the blackout that Wikipedia, for example, took its English-language site entirely offline on 18...
Read MoreTo publish or not to publish, that is the question
We are all familiar with the old academic adage, “publish or perish”, but when commercialisable research outputs have associated potential intellectual property, any published or presented outputs from the research prior to filing patent applications can result in a minefield for the patent applicant. There are two important intrinsic requirements for obtaining a patent for an invention in most countries in the world, the first is that the invention must be new and the second is that the invention must be inventive or non-obvious. In order to be new, an invention cannot have been made ...
Read MoreRecipe Patents
Can Food Recipes be Patented in South Africa? Cookery has become one of the most popular past times of the last few years. This is illustrated by the enormous popularity of TV shows such as “Masterchef” and “Come Dine with Me”; and cookbooks by celebrity chefs such as Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson. This leads to an interesting question – Can food recipes be patented in South Africa? To answer this it is necessary, as with any invention, to look into the statutory requirements for patentability. No matter how delicious the dish, the recipe must still meet the basic conditions...
Read More
