Exploitation of Industrial Design in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in the Manufacturing Industry in Nairobi County

Abstract

This research analyzed the effects of exploitation of industrial design by Small and Medium-size Enterprises (SMEs) in the manufacturing industry of Nairobi County, Kenya. SMEs account for 95% of firms in most countries, create jobs, contribute to GDP, aid industrial development, satisfy local demand for services, innovate and support large firms with inputs and services. In Kenya, SMEs play a key role in economic development and job creation. Exploiting their industrial design rights does not just benefit the SMEs; but also the consumers and the economy. The concern of SMEs in industrial design rights is unfair competition. For instance, Chinese nationals in Kenya, buy and copy the products back in their country, then bring them back to Kenya and sell at lower prices hence creating unfair competition. The study adopted descriptive research design methodology where both quantitative and qualitative data was gathered and analyzed through descriptive analysis and content analysis respectively. Nairobi County had the highest number of SMEs of all the 47 counties at 14.8% thus approximately 1,096,680 SMEs. Most of the Jua kali enterprises were located within Gikomba market. 9% of SMEs in Gikomba market were metal fabricators whereas 2% were timber/ wood workshops. This was approximately 180 metal fabrication enterprises and 40 furniture workshops; 124 metal fabricators and 36 furniture makers were sampled. The data was collected by administering semi structured questionnaires to the respondents. The findings showed that 18.1% of the metal fabricators were aware of Intellectual property, 17.2% were aware of the various forms of IP, 18.1% were aware of KIPI, 93.9% were creating items which could be protected by IP, 0.9% were aware of infringement and 0.9% were aware that protecting their industrial designs could benefit their enterprises. On the other hand, none of the furniture workers were aware of IP, 18.9% of the metal fabricators had their businesses registered, 43.4% had registered their business as trademarks, unfortunately none had registered any of their designs with KIPI, none had filing applications and finally none had designs registered outside Kenya. 38.8% of the respondents said that they come up with the design ideas from market observation, while 61.2% said that they come up with the design ideas from their own creativity. 3.2% of the furniture workers had their businesses registered, 3.2% had registered their business as trademarks, none had registered any of their designs with KIPI, none had filing applications and finally none had designs registered outside Kenya. 61.3% of the respondents said that they come up with design ideas from their own creativity, while 38.7% said that they get the design ideas from design pictures/books and observation from the market. 1.7% of the enterprises under metal fabrication had their designs infringed, none had reported a case or cases of infringement and finally only 5.1% had infringed on other people’s industrial design rights. None of the enterprises dealing in timber had their designs infringed; reported case or cases of infringement and infringed on other people’s industrial design rights. None of both timber and metal fabricators had assigned or licensed their industrial deigns. The research concluded that, IP awareness, industrial design registration, IP enforcement and Industrial design commercialization was low among SMEs.