The Social Cost of Criminalizing a Civil act: TRIPS Section 5 Obligations in Africa

Abstract

Intellectual property rights mandated by the World Trade Organization at the global level is meant to facilitate innovation through research and development. However, the underlying rationale for criminalizing copyright infringement is not clear. Against this backdrop the author weighs the cost and the benefit of the TRIPS Agreement within the least developed countries and posit that the cost outweighs the benefit due to small internal market size and the absence of international market. As a result, premised on the presumption that low volumes of innovation translate into low revenues generated from patent registration locally, poorer countriesruns the risk of debts whilst discharging their TRIPS Section 5 obligation, which will eventually, benefit developed countries multinationals more than the ordinary poor people on the continent.

Keywords: Africa; Copyright; Least Developed Countries; Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights; World Trade Organization.