Intellectual Property Rights Management in Developing Countries

Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) has virtually touched all spheres of human lives, including social, cultural, economic and technical areas and is fast becoming a tool for the national development in the context of globalisation of trade and commerce and emerging knowledge world order. In this context, developing countries have many challenges to face while evolving their own IP systems in order to satisfy their public policy needs and developmental goals. These countries have responded to the new order in different ways and have tried to handle global IPR issues with a sense of commonalty especially in the matters related to protection of genetic resources and traditional knowledge. There is a sense of urgency in developing IP systems in each country to derive maximum benefit from the IPR system to address efficient utilisation of innovations and creativity. Besides this, scientists and technologists can no longer plan and execute their researches without being adequately prepared with the state-of-the-art information driven IPR systems and thus need to have clear and sound understanding of the principles of IPR and good practices of its protection and exploitation. The present publication is a follow up of the international advanced training course on 'Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) in Developing Countries' organised at New Delhi/Manesar, India during 12-17 July, 2010 by the NAM S&T Centre and the Patent Facilitating Centre (PFC) of the Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC), Government of India and supported by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India. It includes 22 research papers including country status reports from 18 developing countries of African, American and Asian regions. The book presents significant insights on IPR and partnership strategies for the developing countries and is expected to be of great value for the researchers, policy makers and professional engaged with the IPR issues.