Today marks the end of a two day conference organised by CIPIT to officially announce its arrival to the world. The theme of this inaugural event was: “To Patent or not to Patent: Protecting Intellectual Property Rights in ICT.”
A summary of proceedings has been summarised in the tweets selected and published here.
This #CIPITConf recap and the all tweets, comments and conversations generated around CIPIT must be reassuring and encouraging for the Strathmore Law CIPIT team that has worked tirelessly behind the scenes. However, with great power comes great responsibility. Therefore as speaker after speaker lauded CIPIT’s bold initiative, each of them also threw one challenge or other to CIPIT as far as the development of intellectual property in Kenya is concerned. Some speakers spoke of the potential role CIPIT could play in raising awareness on intellectual property rights in general, advising members of the public on which IP system is best suited to their individual circumstances, carrying out demand-driven research that will allow policymakers to make better laws and regulations, assisting members of the public in applying to government agencies for IP protection, particularly patent claim drafting. Other speakers challenged CIPIT to use to its position of knowledge to engage with government agencies, private sector and other key stakeholders so as to promote and support Kenya as a growing knowledge economy as well as advise all public sector players in the IP field on best practices in the area of policy formulation and implementation.
In short, CIPIT recognises the high expectations placed upon it by Kenyans at large, as exemplified by those who attended today’s conference. In response, Dr. Isaac Rutenberg, CIPIT director says that he will ensure that the Centre puts the interests of the Kenyan people first and it does not merely seek to develop IP in Kenya for IP’s sake.