The almost endless capacity of government to waste valuable resources by embarking on half-baked, and socially costly, ideas never ceases to amaze me. What makes the situation deeply troubling (and, not just a little, ironic) is that they sometimes spend money employing consultants to tell them that they are wasting money on these enterprises. If […]
Roll up and hear the good news! Today the new sui generis Protection of Traditional Knowledge Bill was published in the Government Gazette, signalling a major step toward the protection of traditional knowledge (TK) in South Africa. Full text of the Bill available here. This Bill is based on the Protection of TK Bill drafted […]
INTRODUCTION As will be apparent from perusing the articles posted on this blog indicated by the keywords “traditional knowledge”, The Vine Oracle has been forthright in its criticism and condemnation of the Department of Trade and Industry’s Intellectual Property Laws Amendment Bill which seeks to introduce a special form of protection for so-called “traditional knowledge” […]
Introduction Because intellectual property rights are territorial in nature (i.e. they have to be recognised by the country in which protection is sought), since the expansion of cross-border trade in the 19th century, authors, creators, designers, inventors and traders have sought similar protection in other countries to that which they enjoy in their domestic legal […]
The South African government has created a new tradition in drafting and processing legislation through Parliament. This tradition manifests itself in the drafting of half-baked legislation with little or no regard to the provisions of the Constitution and then fighting a huge public outcry against the legislation on the grounds that it is unconstitutional. In […]
If you cannot beat them, join them. For that reason this Chair of IP has decided to announce a NEW sui generis Protection of Traditional Knowledge Bill in the hope that something may yet be done to save us all. Government’s current attempt at protecting traditional knowledge by amending current IP statutes remains an unmitigated disaster, […]
So, the Department of Trade and Industry (“DTI”) has finally gone ahead and done it. It has caused the Government to pass the Intellectual Property Laws Amendment Bill (the so-called “Traditional Knowledge Bill”) despite vociferous objections from all quarters. It has rushed headlong into terrain where no angel would venture through acute trepidation. It has […]
Surreptitious negotiations, covert drafts, leaked documents and swift announcements at the eleventh-hour – such is the stranger-than-fiction story of the ‘Piracy Treaty’ signed by several world powers in the past week. Amid controversy about the autocratic role of the USA in the drafting process, and the not-so-voluntary gist of the treaty, most of the Allied […]
“Ex Africa semper aliquid novi”, which can be freely translated from Latin to mean “there is always something new coming out of Africa”, said Pliny, the ancient Roman writer and scholar. Presumably then, as is the case now, the concept of “new” included an expression of sarcasm and deprecation as in “absurd, nonsensical and ridiculous”. […]
