At an intimate gathering of IP academics and practitioners, the IP at Work Initiative headed by Adv. Shlomit Ravitzky Ravid, lecturer at the Ono Academic College Law Faculty, honored Professor Mpazy Sinjila, the Dean of the WIPO Academy.
Professor Sinjila is a Zimbabwian academic with an awe inspiring panoramic view of IP as a worldwide phenomenon and a unique style of delivery. Frankly, his speech was both fascinating and refreshingly different.
Sinjila believes that the motto “Research, Publish or Perish”, which drives academic life, should be replaced by “Research, Patent of Perish”. Israel has a very well developed Technology Transfer infrastructure, and Israel academics are quite good at patenting their ideas.
Some of Sinjila’s examples, and ideas of patentable material do not mesh well will TRIPS and Paris definitions of patentable material. For example, he gave the example of tea, which is manufactured and protected by design patents for teabags and teapots, trademarks for Tetley and PG Tips, is exported world wide by the UK, and is a major British industry supported by subsistence farmers in the World World.
WIPO is a worldwide forum which tries to address social needs around the world. It has forums on Women in IP and on protecting traditional knowledge. The US set up TRIPS under the WTO to undermine WIPO and to protect US innovation from rip off products developed abroad. Put differently, the US has an IP collonialization agenda.
Sinjila recounted with pride about getting Palestinian and Israeli students round the same table in Geneva to discuss IP issues. Having had friends and relatives killed or wounded in terror attacks, believing in my rights to live in my Biblical homeland, but believing in the right of self-determination for my neighbors, even with the noted exceptions of Jaffa as an Appelation of Origin for oranges, and Felafel as an Israeli dish, I don’t honestly think that IP issues are of much significance in the Arab Israel Conflict.
Although I use this blog and lecture from time to time on wider issues, my day to day practice relates to the industrial world, since my clients generally do not file patents or trademarks in Africa, South America or Arab countries. Apart from China and India, which represent big markets and have advanced computer, electronics and biotech industries, the third world is kind of irrelevant in the day to day practice of IP Law.
Although critical of some IP developments and believing that widening IP Rights, encroaches on the public domain, most of my work is focused on getting protection for my clients within the system, not on the problems of the system.
Academia on the other hand, allows more creative freedom, in that one can develop ideas and theoretical frameworks to further social and other aims. Shlomit, who compered the event, is a good example of this. She is a feminist and has spoken out and believes restricting patents to technological advances disadvantages women. She must have found Sinjila’s views refreshing.
Although I am in favor of using law to protect the small guys, I am against lawyers using the law for advancing social agendas, and reject judicial buccaneering in the Barak tradition. This is not solely due to scepticism of the social agendas being advanced by judicial activists.
Uniquely, among Law Faculties in Israel, at Ono, IP Law is a compulsory subject. I attended an Introductory IP Course there in my final year of my LLB (which I took after qualifying and practising as a Patent Attorney). The course was not part of my Law Degree there, but I attended it for interest sake. It was, in my opinion, too heavily biased towards copyright, under-emphasized the International Aspects of IP Law, over-emphasized high court decisions that have little impact on the work of the Patent and trademark Office and was under-critical of decisions of the Supreme Court, which, quite frankly, were wrong. There are minor issues of balance. Training lawyers in IP matters is valuable and worthwhile in the modern world, where most of the wealth is in IP.
By way of example, I appeared before a senior District Judge in a fairly straightforward case recently, where, instead of even attempting to grapple with the issues, the judge announced without shame that she didn’t understand Patent Law and suggested and pressurized that the parties considered mediation. Clearly this level of ignorance and incompetence in IP issues in the judiciary is undesirable, and a basic course in IP during their undergraduate studies can’t harm.
As the sole representative of Israel Patent Attorneys and IP lawyers in private practice, I was honored to have been invited to the reception.
