The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) has recently held a two day meeting to increase intellectual property rights (IPRs) awareness throughout the Europe.The meeting was attended by wide variety of IPRs experts from various fields. However, public interest representatives were missing from the meeting. IPRs cannot be effectively utilised if they cannot be reconciled with public interest demands of the society.
UNECE maintains that an effective and balanced intellectual property (IP) regime increases national wealth and benefits consumers by stimulating research and investment into new technologies and innovative products, and by enabling the transfer of technology, including between countries at different stages of economic development.
UNECE believes that the problem in the UNECE region is that smaller companies are not aware of the benefits of IP, university researchers do not realise that research results need IP protection to be commercialised, and “consumers do not fully understand how, by buying counterfeit products, they are undermining innovative businesses.
This is an important regional development that can assist in the strengthening of IPR regime at the international level. However, in order to develop a global partnership for IP development the United Nations must work in cooperation and coordination with the private sector to make available the benefits of new technologies.
Technology sharing and technology transfer can also help in IP research and innovation throughout the world.
