Dataset: Evolution of Africa’s Intellectual Property Treaty Ratification Landscape

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https://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/20801
Data are lodged from The African Journal of Information and Communication (AJIC)

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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.