Japan to create fund to help Africa with intellectual

Japan will create a 110 million yen fund later this year to step up its efforts to help African countries protect and make better use of intellectual property, government sources said Saturday.

The fund will form part of Japan's latest initiative to assist African development, one of the top agenda items at the Group of Eight Summit to be held in Hokkaido in July, the sources said.

The Japan Patent Office is due to announce the plan Tuesday after JPO Commissioner Masahiro Koezuka holds talks Monday with the heads of the African Intellectual Property Organization, also known as OAPI, and the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization, the sources said.

In a meeting with Paulin Edou Edou, director general of OAPI for French-speaking African countries, and Gift Sibanda, director general of ARIPO for English-speaking African countries, Koezuka will pledge Japan's active support for African countries' efforts to develop sound intellectual property systems, the sources said.

As part of the JPO's steps to raise awareness of the importance of intellectual property rights on a global scale, the sources said it will set up the fund around this summer to allow African government officials, business leaders and legal experts to undergo training programs in cooperation with OAPI, ARIPO and the Japan International Cooperation Agency.

Until now, Japan has mainly been assisting countries in the Asia-Pacific region on how to upgrade their intellectual property systems by offering a voluntary contribution of 170 million yen to the World Intellectual Property Organization.

Under the scheme, Japan has so far accepted more than 2,600 people from the region for training, according to the sources.

To start a similar program for Africa in fiscal 2008, the JPO is planning to increase the current contribution to the Geneva-based U.N. agency by 1.1 million Swiss francs, or about 110 million yen, the sources said.

Japan, the world's top recipient of patent filings based on WIPO's latest figures, believes that proper protection of intellectual property rights is essential for developing countries to build a self-reliant economy.

Leaders from the G-8 major countries, including Britain, Japan and the United States, agreed at last year's summit in Heiligendamm, Germany, on the significance of global harmonization of patent standards.

To protect an invention through a single patent around the world, negotiations on a substantive patent treaty by Japan and other key industrialized countries are ongoing.

On the back of rapid globalization of the world economy, both developed and developing countries are facing the challenge of how to shorten the time to acquire patents.

Prior to this year's G-8 summit meeting, Japan will host the fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development in May.

Japan is hoping to lead discussions on African development to raise its international profile when it hosts the conference in Yokohama together with the United Nations.

In addition to meeting with Koezuka, the two African director generals will take part in a forum in Tokyo on Tuesday on issues related to intellectual property, which will be organized by the International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property of Japan and sponsored partly by the JPO.

The members of OAPI include Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Guinea and Senegal, while those of ARIPO include Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia and Zimbabwe.