Implementation of Effective Intellectual Property (IP) Management Framework by Publicly Financed Research and Academic Institutions in Ghana

Abstract

Awareness is currently going on in most public and private academic institutions and other publicly financed research institutions in developing countries including Ghana to implement an effective Intellectual Property (IP) management framework with special focus on Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) protection to enhance security of the research and development outputs. Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs) in publicly financed and private institutions are supposed to come out with mechanisms or policies that are mostly applied consciously to manage the generation of IPs, the rights of ownership, exploitation of rights, rights protection, enforcement and output commercialization. The implementation of IP management system requires a clear policy and legislative backing as well as an efficient administration and enforcement structure. This study research is a qualitative research which is based on pure and applied research methodology classified by purpose. It is an inductive research approach which is embodied as a pure or fundamental research undertaken for an increase in knowledge. The research is conducted on publicly-financed research and academic institutions located in three regional capital cities in three selected regions of Ghana and it discusses the extent implementation of IP management framework by these institutions. Participants relevant to the study were selected through purposive sampling approach. Qualitative research method was adopted and the data gathering technique was based on structured and semi structured interviews, administration of questionnaires, observation of available IP documents and files and experts’opinions. Through questionaires and face to face interviews, data was gathered on prevailing practices in the focus institutions. In the data analysis, an internal analysis approach was the basis of investigating the data in context within the sampled population. Narratives or conversations were analyzed. Within this context, visual materials or visual data were also applied. In the main analysis phase, confirmatory approach was adopted to enable a clear hypothesis about the data to be tested. The study revealed the status of implementation of a framework of IP management for protection and management of IP owned or generated by public research and academic institutions in Ghana. The study further established the extent of implementation of such a framework in the various institution. The findings indicate that in most of the institutions, even though there are some level of awareness of IP management strategies, there is lack of clear policies to administer the implementation and management of such strategies and this has given rise to inadequate staff knowledge on the instutions IP ownership, benefit sharing schemes and other institutional IP issues. This points out the need for the institutions to be very conversant with the national IP laws, IP Policies, strategies and regulations in Ghana, to effectively manage IP emanating from research conducted by their staff.