National Intellectual Property Strategy
Egypt launched its National Strategy for Intellectual Property on September 21, 2022, in an official ceremony organized under the auspices of President El-Sisi, and inaugurated in the presence of Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly. The launch was attended by the World Intellectual Property Organization's (WIPO) Director-General Daren Tang1.
The duration of implementation of the Strategy is (5 Years) from September 2022-2027 and is based on the following principles:
- Respect of IP
- Equal opportunities, social justice and adherence to transparency standards
- Supporting competitiveness and preventing monopolistic practices
- Ensuring and consolidating freedom of thought and opinion, and the rights of artistic and literary creativity, developing talents, inducing innovation and scientific research, supporting and developing its institutions, fostering researchers and inventors, and protecting their acquired rights.
- Achieving the optimal balance between granting exclusive rights to encourage creativity, innovation and investment in various fields on the one hand and achieving the general interest of society in various aspects of life on the other.
- Governance and enhancement of institutional work in the authority to be established and entrusted with the competence of protecting IP rights
- The correlation between authority and responsibility, whereby the State Authorities are deemed responsible for carrying out their duties towards implementing the strategy and ensuring its effectiveness.
The strategy reflected the current status of IP-related rights which shows some weaknesses (i.e. SWOT analysis) such as lack of expertise and developed human resources, the lack of integration between science and industry research, as well as the absence of a comprehensive exclusive pool of IP assets owned by the state.
As to Patents, such weakness is noticeable from the 2021 statistics of the number of patent applications in Egypt, namely 2,225, including 881 from residents (Egyptian) and 1,344 from non-residents (foreigners). The report shows that the number of patent applications filed by the Egyptians is only 39% of the total applications in 2021. Moreover, although most of the applicants are companies (85%), few of them only are Egyptian companies.
Regarding the Utility models, although the IP law no. 82/2002 regulates this right for protecting minor inventions which are considered easily granted with fewer conditions and fees than patents, however, there is a very limited number of filings of utility models in Egypt. The awareness of this type of IP right is important, especially for natural Applicants and SMEs.
The current statics reflects a noticeable increase in the filing percentage of trademarks, industrial designs and plant varieties in Egypt over the past three years.
The Strategic goals include mainly four elements, as follows:
1) Governance of the Institutional Structure of the IP: through the establishment of a National IP Authority to coordinate the efforts of IP departments and offices across Egypt, including those at universities and research institutions, as well as supporting the Digital Transformation and promoting the enforcement of IP rights.
It is important to highlight that the constitutional legislator realized the situation and decided in Article 69 of the Egyptian Constitution to establish a competent body to foster IP rights and undertake their legal protection, in order to achieve harmony and integration between the elements of the IP system and become an arm of the State in this field.
2) Configuring the Legislative Environment for IP: through short-term intervention "Urgent phase" by working on solving urgent fundamental problems related to the IP system, as well as a medium-term intervention which entails a comprehensive review of all legislation related to the IP.
3) Optimizing the economic return of IP in achieving the SDGs: through encouraging the commercial exploitation of IP assets after their financial valuation according to the latest international standards, maximizing the use of IP in scientific research and linking it to the needs of the national industry, implementing rational and balanced IP policies in the field of public health and access to medicine, maximizing the economic value of the medium, small enterprises, maximizing the economic returns of the tourism and heritage sectors and regulating the access to biological resources and related traditional knowledge and the sharing of benefits arising therefrom.
4) Raising awareness of Egyptian society on IP: through disseminating and promoting public awareness of IP and the national IP strategy main components, maximizing the use of IP in scientific research and linking it to the needs of the Integrating the concepts of creativity, innovation and intellectual property into the educational process at the pre-university level as well as promoting IP awareness in universities and research institutions, and motivating students and scholars to produce IP.
The strategy provides also the institutional and interim framework for follow-up and evaluation and is divided into two phases the Council of Ministers will follow up on the efforts of the various State authorities and sectors in the implementation of the Strategy.
Given the importance of the such event, more than ten Egyptian government ministers attended the launch ceremony alongside ambassadors, representatives of UN bodies and international organizations, members of national institutions mandated with administering IP in Egypt and key national figures working in the fields of education, entrepreneurship, technology and the creative economy.
Footnote
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