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http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/2853
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| Title: | Designing Intellectual Property Law as a Tool for Development: Prospects and Challenges of the Ethiopian Patent Regime |
| Authors: | Habtamu, Hailemeskel |
| Advisors: | Fisseha-Tsion Menghistu (Prof. Dr.) |
| Keywords: | Intellectual Property Law
Ethiopian Patent Regime |
| Copyright: | Nov-2011 |
| Date Added: | 9-May-2012 |
| Publisher: | AAU |
| Abstract: | Intellectual property rights are believed to have an indirect role in facilitating the development
efforts of a particular country by encouraging investment in inventions by establishing secured
property system. The now advanced countries and the newly industrialized countries used to
design their patent laws in tune with their technical and economic needs. They do so, for
instance by weak intellectual property systems, by excluding sensitive technological fields from
protection, by violating foreign rights, by using petty-patents and encouraging imitation,
adaptation and reverse-engineering. However, means available during those times are blocked
by harmonization of intellectual property rights through multilateral, regional and bilateral
agreements. There are also ongoing harmonization efforts. The flexibilities for policy options are
impoverished by these movements. Catching up efforts by technologically non-proficient or non-
industrialized countries are becoming increasingly difficult. Their low technological capability
demands them to tailor intellectual property system that helps technological knowledge develop
within them by encouraging learning by doing and accumulation of knowledge. Compared to the
historical, theoretical and empirical lessons, the current Ethiopian patent law, though its aim is
to encourage local inventive activities, build national technological capability and transfer and
adaptation of foreign technologies, crushes itself by employing standards that cannot be met by
domestic enterprises even in cases of minor inventions. Ethiopia should, therefore, reform its
patent law in a way that can contribute to its development efforts and enhance technical learning
and accumulation of knowledge by domestic enterprises via increased exposure to foreign
technologies. |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/2853 |
| Appears in: | Thesis - Law
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