The Registrar General’s Department (RGD) has called for increased education on the relevance of copyright and intellectual property (IP) registration in the country to save businesses the cost of non-registration.
Currently, many institutions and individual are unaware of the benefits of registering their business inventions and other intellectual properties as trademarks with the National Industrial Property Office (NIPO), which keeps records of such things in the country.
The Acting Registrar General, Madam Jemima Oware, said at a workshop in Accra that out of the 3,034 applications for trademarks received last year, only 970 of them, representing 32 per cent, were locally owned.
The 70 per cent, she said, came from foreign entities, confirming fears that Ghanaians were yet to realise the benefits of trademark registrations.
“Ghana, like many other developing countries, has challenges with the utilisation of the intellectual property system, with flagrant infringement of intellectual rights,” she said at the opening of a three-day workshop on intellectual property enforcement in Accra.
The workshop was organised by the regional office of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the US Embassy in Ghana to expose stakeholders to the nuances of IP and how to get increased participation from the public.
General challenge
Explaining further, Madam Oware said the issue of low awareness of IP was not a problem faced by Ghana alone but was widespread in almost all developing countries.
She added that it was not surprising that the records at the NIPO showed low registration among locals.
“It is believed that adequate awareness could contribute to a reduction in infringement of IP rights. This is because awareness creation is likely to reduce the number of innocent infringers and cause the users to IP rights to appreciate, recognise and respect the rights of the holders,” she added.
Madam Oware said in 2013 when 1,550 pieces of pirated textiles were seized and destroyed, perpetrators of those crimes were later found to be innocent of the infringes.
She mentioned the pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and food industries as the sectors where IP infringements were rampant.