Browsing by Author "Baarbé, Jeremiah"

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Dataset for AJIC Issue 22 (2018) article entitled "Evolution of Africa’s Intellectual Property Treaty Ratification Landscape"
(LINK Centre, University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg, 2018-12-07) De Beer, Jeremy; Baarbé, Jeremiah; Ncube,Caroline; Open African Innovation Research (Open AIR) network
This open access dataset is described and analysed in the following article: De Beer, J., Baarbé, J., & Ncube, C. (2018). Evolution of Africa’s intellectual property treaty ratification landscape. The African Journal of Information and Communication (AJIC), 22, 53-82. https://doi.org/10.23962/10539/26173 . The data is a subset of the Open AIR network’s research project data holding via a working paper entitled The Intellectual Property Treaty Landscape in Africa, 1885 to 2015 by Jeremy de Beer, Jeremiah Baarbé, Caroline Ncube, working paper 4, published online 5 May 2017, http://www.openair.org.za/publications/the-intellectual-property-treaty-landscape-in-africa-1885-to-2015/ . Open Air is a network of African researchers in the University of Ottawa in Canada, the University of Cape Town in South Africa, Strathmore University in Kenya, the Nigerian Institute for Advanced Legal Studies, and the American University in Cairo, Egypt. Its purpose is to answer two major research questions in order to ensure that African knowledge and innovation is not lost in the knowledge economy. The major research questions are: 1 How can open collaborative innovation help businesses scale up and seize the new opportunities of a global knowledge economy? And 2. Which knowledge governance policies will best ensure that the social and economic benefits of innovation are shared inclusively? (Openair Network , 10 Dec 11:12 am http://www.openair.org.za/about-us/ ) Under this overarching framework: the specific research question is whether it is correct that local Intellectual policy making was “constrained to some extent by the powerful global IP governance schemata.”( De Beer, J., Baarbé, J., & Ncube, C. 2018) To answer this question a historical systematic review of IP treaties along with the extents and dates of ratification via electronic scraping. Specifically, researchers wished to explore whether the tension that they saw between countries who’s “International commitments harmonized in intellectual property treaties exist in tension with local needs for flexibility”. (De Beer et al., 2018) could be supported quantitatively. This project created simple quantitative data out of qualitative lists of policies along with the presence or absence of ratification by African countries. The source of the data is the UN Convention on World Intellectual Property Organization( WIPO) database which has tables listing parties to the treaty, as well as the date of signature, filling of legal instrument used to ratify the treaty and entry into force. These terms are defined in the Glossary attached. Data collected by hand is from the Nagoya Protocol, the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources, and International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV). UPOV data is defined in the explanatory note attached. The data contains Six major variables: Country name, Treaty name, Date of Treaty, ratification by country, IP Regime defined in legal terms i.e. copyright, Colonising state. The minor variables is the Official Language. The main independent variable was 36 treaties of which two were excluded as not yet being in force at the time of data collection. The major dependent variable was the date of ratification by country present in WIPO database. Total data was 485 ratifications by the 34 countries thus creating 16 490 geographical- time data points.
Evolution of Africa’s Intellectual Property Treaty Ratification Landscape
(LINK Centre, University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg, 2018-12-07) De Beer, Jeremy; Baarbé, Jeremiah; Ncube, Caroline
Intellectual property (IP) policy is an important contributor to economic growth and human development. However, international commitments harmonised in IP treaties often exist in tension with local needs for flexibility. This article tracks the adoption of IP treaties in Africa over a 131-year span, from 1884 to 2015, through breaking it down into four periods demarcated by points in time coinciding with key events in African and international IP law: the periods 1884–1935, 1936–1965, 1966–1995, and 1996¬–2015. The article explores relevant historical and legal aspects of each of these four periods, in order to assess and contextualise the evolutions of the IP treaty landscape on the continent. The findings show that treaties now saturate the IP policy space throughout the continent, limiting the ability to locally tailor approaches to knowledge governance.
A Proposed “Agricultural Data Commons” in Support of Food Security
(LINK Centre, University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg, 2019-06-28) Baarbé, Jeremiah; Blom, Meghan; De Beer, Jeremy
This article identifies a data governance model that could help reduce dataset access inequities currently experienced by smallholder farmers in both developed-world and developing-world settings. Agricultural data is globally recognised for its importance in addressing food insecurity, with such data generated and used by a value chain of contributors, collectors, and users. Guided by the modified institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework, our study considered the features of agricultural data as a “knowledge commons” resource. The study also looked at existing data collection modalities practiced by John Deere, Plantwise and Abalobi, and at the open data distribution modalities available under the Creative Commons and the Open Data Commons licensing frameworks. The study found that an “agricultural data commons” model could give greater agency to the smallholder farmers who contribute data. A model open data licence could be used by data collectors, supported by a certification mark and a dedicated public interest organisation. These features could engender an agricultural data commons that would be advantageous to the three key stakeholders in agricultural data: data contributors, who need engagement, privacy, control, and benefit-sharing; small and medium-sized-enterprise (SME) data collectors, who need sophisticated legal tools and an ability to brand their participation in opening data; and data users, who need open access.