In the year 2019, the African Regional Intellectual Property Organisation (“ARIPO”) received 9604 patent applications, and 2335 trademark applications. Of these, only 562 and 274, respectively, originated from Botswana. These statistics are surprising, in the face of Botswana’s status as one of the fastest growing economies in Africa.
Although it is common knowledge that a robust and pragmatic intellectual property management policy is the only surefire way to protect a company’s products, brand, image and the associated good will, what is often over looked, is that the same robust intellectual property management policy, can, with a little experienced guidance, lead to secondary revenue streams and increase of a balance sheet for any corporate entity through capital growth and annual revaluations.
The first step in realising the potential in an entity’s intellectual property, would be to carry out an intellectual property audit. This is carried out in order to identify the intellectual property assets of the entity, as well as the level of protection that each intellectual property asset of the entity enjoys. An intellectual property audit can also greatly assist an entity to identify or assess the commercial potential and/or risks of each intellectual property asset, and most importantly determine the best means of protecting same.
Once the audit has been completed, the entity can use the information derived from the audit to design an appropriate intellectual property management system which will preserve and enhance its intellectual property, identify and deal with defects in its intellectual property rights, put unused intellectual property to work, put appropriate risk mitigation measures in place and maintain intellectual property asset management best practice.
Intellectual property audits are important for the following reasons:
- Identification of intellectual property that is already owned by an entity;
- Preservation of the value of the existing intellectual property;
- Identification of new opportunities to profit from intellectual property rights;
- Prevention of costly disputes; and
- Facilitation and optimization of business transactions
In the context of Botswana’s legislative framework, intellectual property (both capable of registration or otherwise) encompasses various forms, and can extend to:
- Patents;
- Trademarks;
- Designs;
- Trade names;
- Trade secrets (customer lists, vendor/supplier lists, formulations);
Copyright (marketing materials, product guides, manuals, audio-visual works, software, information compilations, artworks).
The best method of determining the intellectual property which is relevant for each entity would be to carry out an intellectual property audit.
Our intellectual property team is led by Mr Topiwa Chilume, with over 22 years’ experience in the corporate and commercial field and has advised various corporates and research institutions on intellectual property related issues over the years. He has also, as part of Botswana Innovation Hub initiatives, given talks on commercialization of intellectual property rights.