I blogged about two unfortunate students from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the appropriation of their efforts to help people in the developing world. How would a similar scenario play out in South Africa.
Until recently the answer would depend very much on the approach of the specific institution where the students were studying. While a university could have tried to assert monopoly rights over the creativity of their undergraduates such claims were virtually unknown in South Africa. However the
Intellectual Property Rights from Publicly Financed Research Bill 2008
has changed that, requiring a university to seek statutory protection (whatever that means) and to commercialise all publicly financed research. If a university would prefer not to commercialise research then the research can be appropriated by a central government office. The results would be rather similar to the story in the New York Times.
If a South African professor, in response to the spread of cholera in Mpumalanga were to set an assignment challenging her students to come up with a cheap cholera filter which could be made from widely available materials, and some of her students came up with an brilliant, simply filter, then its likely that the filer would end up patented but not used, and people would continue to die of preventable cholera.
Would a student design be regarded publicly financed research? My answer is no, because the South African Constitution upholds a right to academic freedom. But I am not answering the question, instead that question will be answered by university officials who will have to choose between launching a court case against likely to go to the Constitutional Court, which might take three years and cost a great deal in legal fees, against the Department which gives the university money for research. Even if a university, seeing the social benefit of making the invention as widely available as possible were to prefer to release it into the public domain, the national office is empowered to lay claim to it.
If the invention is to be commercialised then those seeking to make money from it can only make money by charging someone with money for making it. The people at greatest risk from cholera are not going to be able to afford things when the price is set by a monopoly provider, even if sufficient numbers are ever brought to market.
Innovation to solve social problems in developing countries cannot be solve the problems by being commoditised. By definition the people who most need the innovations cannot afford them.
The kinds of innovations which can help solve social problems in developing countries must be freely available. They need to be the kinds of things which can be made from freely available materials relatively easily. Even then the knowledge of how to make them, and the necessity of making them will require communication with the most marginalised of society. Public and private agencies are likely to be motivated to assist in this, unless they perceive that they are being asked to underwrite the marketing campaign of a monopoly rights holder.
Innovation for development must be open innovation, nothing else stands a chance.
