By Richard NUNEKPEKU
At the heart of a nation’s economic transformation is innovation—from groundbreaking inventions, revolutionary business models to industry-disrupting technologies. And underlying these innovations have been “ideas” transformed into protectable commercial products and services deployed at scale to solve targeted end-user pain points.
Historically, countries have recognized the importance of protecting the ingenuity and creativity of individuals who drive innovations and have supported the evolution of intellectual property (IP) regimes through common law and statutory enactments to protect innovators.
Globally, the most innovative economies, including the United States and China, have shown that they owe their sustained dominance in the innovation ecosystem to strong IP protection frameworks.
These regimes have provided the legal frameworks and economic infrastructures that encourage investments in research and development (R&D) and offer protections for resulting products and services, among others. Ultimately, these initiatives safeguard their competitive advantages and attract investments into their innovation space.
Unfortunately, over the years, Ghana’s IP regime has not been leveraged properly to drive and support innovations. It has been characterized by legal frameworks, regulatory and institutional arrangements that do not aligned with the realities of emerging trends, technologies and innovation demands.
It is therefore laudable to note that the current government is committed to driving Ghana’s leadership in innovations in Africa. And as technological advancements continue to revolutionize industries, from FinTech and AI to biotechnology and creative arts, the pursuit of such innovation leadership must be anchored on a robust, responsive, and forward-looking IP regulatory regime that ensures effective enforcement mechanisms and promote institutional support for sustainable innovations.
This article, therefore, looks at the justifications and components of an IP regime that could help spur innovations in Ghana.
The innovation cycle and intellectual property
Innovation is a cyclical process that transforms ideas into commercially viable products and services. While ideas alone are not legally protectable, they serve as the foundation for intellectual property rights, ranging from patents for inventions to copyrights for creative works and trademarks for brand identities.
Led by entrepreneurs, founders, and inventors motivated by the need to solve identified end-user pain points or general societal problems and driven by the economic incentives of profits, market share, or investment attraction, the desire to innovate usually creates a highly competitive market deserving of protection for the investment of labor, time, and other resources by the innovators.
To foster protection and encourage the continuous pursuit of innovations, IP protective regimes have been used to secure economic benefits for innovators and protect the underlying subject matter assets, products and services against the risks of unfair reproduction, imitation, use, and exploitation by others.
In the process, IP protections have produced tech giants like Apple, Microsoft, OpenAI, Huawei, etc., who continue to rely on the assurances of IP rights to expand their global reach, leveraging their proprietary technologies and deriving economic benefits for stakeholders, including shareholders by way of dividends and growth in company valuations and for governments through the payment of taxes and other statutory fees. As well, the social, productive, and economic lives of end users have also significantly improved due to the design and deployment of leading innovations backed by IP protections.
Over time, robust IP regimes have produced economic advantages at scale—attracting investments, creating jobs, and boosting tax revenues. And Ghana as pursue its agenda for innovation leadership, it must focus on building an innovation ecosystem that prioritizes and offers strong IP protection and enforcement.
The basics: IP, IP assets, and IP rights
To appreciate the role of IP in innovation leadership, it is essential to understand the distinctions between Intellectual Property, IP assets, and IP rights. Generally, Intellectual Property (IP) refers to creations of the mind—inventions, artistic works, brand identities, and proprietary business processes, while IP assets represent ownership of these creations, such as a patented invention, a registered trademark, or a copyrighted literary work.
On the other hand, IP rights are the legal protections granted to owners of IP assets, permitting exclusive uses and enforcement against unauthorized exploitation. Some common IP rights include patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, and industrial designs.
Today, the existing legal protective frameworks for these IP rights have come under constant challenge due to rapid technological advances. While these challenges remain, entrepreneurs and businesses need to understand the type of IP protection available for their innovations and strategically implement appropriate protective regimes that align with their industries and business models for maximum economic leverage. And this has become imperative for businesses as Ghana’s IP laws and enforcement mechanisms are currently not aligned with the needs of the global digital-first economy.
IP as a tool for driving Ghana’s innovation leadership
Urgent IP reform is required to spur Ghana’s leadership in innovations. This reform must be multifaceted, addressing both legal structures and administrative enforcement mechanisms.
It must be pursued with the intent of modernizing our current IP regime, where existing laws are reviewed, amended and new ones enacted to reflect the realities of digital innovations and the increasing use of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and blockchain technologies. This will ensure that our laws evolve with technological advancements and secure innovators the advantages they require to continue to invest in new products and services.
Also, the reform must seek to balance long-held traditional IP doctrines with emerging technological opportunities. In this regard, clear guidelines, for instance, must be provided on emerging issues of ownership of AI-generated content and IP protection for computer-assisted works.
Further, the reform must pursue administrative or regulatory effectiveness and efficiency by digitizing IP registration and enforcement processes to reduce bureaucratic delays and promote compliance. This is achievable through institutional support, which encourages investments in new technologies, builds staff capacities, and promotes strong stakeholder engagement.
While these regulatory reforms are imperative, innovators and business founders must also internalize deliberate IP protection strategies to avoid exposure to risks of exploitation by others. Strategies aligned to promoting employee IP protective awareness, proper record and filing systems, need-to-know basis disclosures backed by non-disclosure commitments, registrations of IP creations where appropriate, and simplified breach reporting systems within companies can help drive robust IP protection and enforcement.
Conclusion
Ghana cannot drive innovation leadership without a strong IP regime. Intellectual property protection is an investment in economic growth, ensuring that creators, inventors, and businesses benefit from their ingenuity.
If Ghana is to become a true hub of African innovation, it must prioritize legal reforms, administrative efficiency, and more vigorous enforcement of IP protections. This requires a collaborative effort between government, private enterprises, and regulatory bodies. The time for passive IP administration is over—a forward-looking, responsive, and protective IP regime is essential for positioning Ghana as Africa’s innovation hub.
≫>the writer is the Managing Partner of Sustineri Attorneys PRUC, a Technology Consultant, and is currently pursuing an LLM at Cornell Tech, deepening his expertise in Law, Technology, and Entrepreneurship. He is a recipient of the 2024 CALI “Excellence for the Future Award” for excellent achievement in the study of AI Law and Policy at Cornell Law School. He welcomes views on this article via [email protected]
