Equitable Protection for Intellectual Property in Africa

This document is a position paper from AEFJN which sets out their views with regard to IPR protection regimes as they relate to Africa. The paper is directed particularly at the EU and it's member states.

In particular the paper champions the African Model Law (AML) developed by the OAU. It summarises the key features of AML as follows:

• The right of a community to their biological resources, traditional knowledge and technologies over rights based on individual or corporate monopoly interests.
• The right of African states and people to ensure the conservation, evaluation and sustainable use of their biological resources, traditional knowledge and technologies, and to govern access to them.
• The right of local communities to have access, use, exchange or share their biological resources as established by customary low and practice.
• The right of African states to protect farmers’ rights and community intellectual property to biological resources according to customary law and practice.
• The right to forbid the patenting of life in any of its forms.

In the context of the 2002/2003 negotiations at the WTO in Geneva on the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (TRIPS) and the mandate given to the TRIPS Council under the Doha declaration, AEFJN asks the European Union and governments of its member states:

1. To assure that the review of Art. 27.3b of the TRIPS Agreement be compatible with the Convention on Bio Diversity.
2. To facilitate the WTO recognition of IPR legislations of African countries based on the African Model Law for the protection of the rights of local communities, farmers and breeders.