LIBERIA: PLANS TO DEVELOP AN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY STRATEGIC PLAN

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The Liberia Intellectual Property Office (LIPO) has commenced a 12-day stakeholders’ engagement field trip in order to develop a national intellectual property strategic plan to be integrated into the government’s national development agenda. The trip would be managed by two expert consultants sent by the World Intellectual Property Organization to work alongside the agency’s staff to develop the country’s strategic IP plan through stakeholder engagement. 

In line with current efforts by stakeholders in the creative industry to ensure that government pays more attention to this lucrative creative industry, the essence of the field trip is to change things as part of its trajectory will be the development of a national strategic intellectual property (IP) plan that will encourage and facilitate useful creations, critical developments and management and protection of IP at the national level, as well as give more subsidies to creative industry societies.

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In furtherance of this move, the LIPO Director General Roosevelt Gould opined as follows;

·        The document that is being developed is a crosscutting document which outlines links with diverse policy areas to ensure effective coordination with other activities.

·        A national IP strategy strengthens a country's ability to generate economic growth, both in terms of GDP and human capital. 

·        With this strategy, everything ranging from literary to artistic works and genetic and biological assets will be protected and the individual behind it will fully reap his or her benefit. Without a national IP strategy, it is difficult to unlock these assets in a planned, efficient, and sustainable manner. 

The goal of this national IP strategy is the creation, ownership, and management of artists and inventors’ rights to increase economic growth. The world is now being controlled by IP, and if other countries are benefiting from this, it is about time Liberia starts to benefit as well. We have artists and inventors who are supposed to be millionaires by now, but this is not happening because we lack a national IP strategy."

·        We have a good IP law but in the absence of a national IP strategy - which is a key policy tool to promote public interest in the arts and innovation and for the environment to strive, then the law remains inactive," he said.