Message from the Director

Welcome to the webpage of the Centre for Intellectual Property Law.

Intellectual property (or IP) has become the backbone of modern commerce and many of the world’s largest corporations today would not have existed if it was not for their intellectual property. As a result, any university which claims to educate the great legal minds of the future would be neglecting its duties if there was no focus on IP law.

Together with our industry partners at Adams & Adams, our aim is to establish the Centre for Intellectual Property Law as a major hub for the research into and study of IP law in Africa. Therefore at the Centre we promote research into the law and policy relating to trade marks, designs, patents, copyright, traditional knowledge and other creations of the mind. In this regard, our academic staff members are well supported by colleagues from practice, as well as our Doctoral and Master’s students.

But the Centre also provides a platform to research and debate the social responsibility of IP rights holders. Important questions, such as whether cigarette companies should be allowed to display their trademarks prominently on cigarette packaging or to what extent governments can infringe on pharmaceutical patents to address national health concerns, are but some of the issues that arise in this regard. In the end, we do not claim to have all the answers to these kinds of problems, but we trust that our research will contribute to the important debates in this regard.

(Prof) Steve Cornelius
Director: Centre for Intellectual Property

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