25 Jun 2020

Botswana has seen an explosion of industrial innovations in response to COVID-19. 

  However, the Companies and Industrial Property Authority (CIPA) says Batswana are slow to apply for industrial protection for the innovations.

Speaking in an interview, industrial property registrar at CIPA, Mr Timothy Moalusi said the authority had observed that a majority of innovators were quick to put their products in the market without first applying for patent rights.

He said Batswana need to understand that once a product was introduced into the public domain without a patent, it ran the risk of losing the industrial right of the originator against copy and commercialisation by other parties.

He noted that they had recently began reaching out to innovators to encourage them to make applications for industrial patents for their products.

“Some of these people were already posting their innovations on social media and we encouraged them to take down photos and apply for patents first,” he said.

He also encouraged Batswana to make applications of patent rights at the prototype stage to ensure that as soon as they began commercialisation their product would be protected. 

Mr Moalusi noted that they had received six industrial property applications since the pandemic, saying some were utility models while others were designs models.

Out of the applications, he confirmed that only one industrial patent had been reviewed and approved, however, indicating that the numbers were low.

“Batswana need to understand that ideas are everywhere and they need to be translated into products and patented otherwise innovators will lose out,” he added.

Mr Moalusi advised innovators that under CIPA there was a fee payable for all rights under industrial property rights before a product could be reviewed under the right requirements and approved.

On issues of territorial integrity in the purvey of industrial patents, Mr Moalusi clarified that patent protections were territorial and did not bind commercial interests in other countries.

According to him, another person in another country could still commercialise a similar product if the innovator did not also file an intellectual property protection in that country.

Mr Moalusi noted a case which made headlines in the country last year where a South African businessman wanted to commercialise reflective collars for livestock in the country, and it was found that a local man had also come up with the same invention.

He explained that the South African had allegedly filed an application for protection regionally which meant he could commercialise his product within the SADC region.

He urged innovators to approach CIPA if they wanted to commercialise in foreign markets as the authority had protocols to assist with that. Ends