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Business Reporter

A TORAL of 12 representatives of companies involved in the manufacture of anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) participated in a recent regional training workshop on Intellectual Property Rights.

The event was organised by the SADC in partnership with the African Regional Intellectual Property Oganisation (ARIPO) in Harare.

It drew participants from Botswana, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The capacity building training workshop was aimed at strengthening regional and national Intellectual Property Rights Policies and Regulations (IPRs) and Trade Related Intellectual Property Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) compliance.

Professor Michael Blakeney of the University of Western Australia, the lead consultant for the training in partnership with experts from ARIPO, conducted the training and topics covered included Introduction to intellectual property concepts and principles, patenting and generics, pharmaceutical patenting and SMEs, intellectual property rights, market competition and access to affordable medicines, enforcement of IPRs in the ARV sector and protection of traditional medicines and knowledge.

The training raised awareness of IPRs among the participants from the ARV sector in the Sadc region who learnt about patents on ARVs, availability of patented ARVs, patents and fixed dose combinations, licensing, costs of generics, medicines patent pool, compulsory licensing of patents, TRIPS waiver; TRIPS flexibilities, procurement of ARVs in SADC and competition controls.

According to ARIPO Intellectual Property is a very wide field of law that affects human kind in all daily activities in the consumption of products and services and is comprised of three components, namely industrial property; copyright and related rights; as well as emerging issues of Intellectual Property.

At the end of the training workshop, which was convened by the Sadc Secretariat under the support to the Industrialisation and Productive Sectors (SIPS) programme, participants were presented with certificates at a brief ceremony at ARIPO head office in Harare, Zimbabwe.

SIPS is a programme funded by the European Union (EU) and the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). It aims to enhance the regional policy and regulatory environment and also private sector participation in regional value chains.

The objective of SIPS is to contribute to the SADC industrialisation and regional integration agenda by improving the performance and growth of selected regional value chains as well as the related services within the agro-processing and pharmaceutical sectors.