In this paper, we present an overview of South Africa’s Intellectual Property Rights from the Publicly funded research and development Act, which imitates the US Bayh-Dole Act.
The paper draws on the experience of the Bahy-Dole legislation in the US to show the shortcomings of the common approach aimed at facilitating the transfer of innovative research from the public to the private sector by way of IRP protection including patents.
In the US, the Bayh-Dole has dramatically changed the nature of publicly financed institutions from those conducting pure research to quasi commercial entities withholding information in the quest for patent protection.
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