Ahram - Egypt's Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly launched on Wednesday the country's National Strategy for Intellectual Property during a ceremony held in the New Administrative Capital, in the presence of a host of ministers and local and international officials, including the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Director-General Daren Tang.
The ceremony, held under the patronage of President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, is in line with the WIPO Development Agenda, the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and Egypt’s Vision 2030.
The move reflects the country's interest in this area given the role that the intellectual property (IP) system can play in advancing the Egyptian economy and achieving the sustainable goals of the county's Vision 2030, Madbouly said in a word at the ceremony.
The strategy is the first-ever step of its kind for IP and aims to realize governance of institutional structure of IP by establishing a national apparatus for IP as well as boost digital transformation and provide registration services in IT methods.
The strategy aims to pave the way for a legislative environment on IP and support digital transformation in government services as well as spread the concepts of innovation by merging such concepts with all phases of the educational process.
The Geneva-based WIPO was created in 1970 to promote and protect IP across the world by cooperating with countries and international organizations. Egypt has been a member of WIPO since 1975, and has signed 14 agreements administered by the organization.
These agreements include the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Property, the Patent Cooperation Treaty, the Madrid Agreement on the International Registration of Marks and the Hague Agreement on the International Deposit of Industrial Designs.
On the sidelines of the ceremony, the country's first-ever IP exhibition was held to showcase a series of designs and models of innovations in several spheres, including green fuels and environmentally friendly products, in addition to innovative models of seeds, vegetable and fruit products, textiles, and electronics.
Madbouly toured the exhibition pavilions of several Egyptian universities, research institutions and companies. He examined a model of modern car that runs on environmentally friendly energy, praising the product as "a good model for the Egyptian industry."
He said the price of the car is economical and suits different segments of Egyptians, calling for starting cooperation with the country's Arab Organization for Industrialization to locally manufacture the product to be rolled out on the Egyptian market as a safe and clean alternative.
Madbouly also called for producing electric car parts locally in order to reduce the bill for importing car components as well as expand the local manufacture of these cars and export them to global markets.
Another group of pavilions at the exhibition was inspected by the prime minister, including the ones for steel industry components, underscoring the importance of having factories specialized in the production of the components to reduce reliance on imports.
Among the toured pavilion was one dubbed 'The Encyclopedia of Traditional Egyptian Food', a set of the country's popular food issued by the Egyptian Academy of Scientific Research and Technology in cooperation with the National Research Centre.
The encyclopedia is meant to document the history of Egyptian food, including their nutrients and methods of preparation, in addition to highlighting the dangers of the extinction of these food cultures.
The exhibition also comprised a number of online educational platforms – including the One-to-One platform that aims to teaching English and provides content corresponding to intellectual property rights in Egypt, and The School I platform that aims to teach children the basics of coding.
