Topic: International Intellectual Property Protection
Country: Democratic Republic of the Congo
Delegate Name: Abigail Zhang
School: Forest Hills Northern High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Democratic Republic of the Congo position papers GLIMUN 2017 committees
For an economy to grow, it is important that citizens continue to produce creative works. Works like domain names, building designs, and softwares are protected by intellectual property laws such as patent, trademark, and copyright law. Not only do intellectual property laws protect intellectual property (IP), they also protect the physical property that was a result of the idea. IP protection must continue to be enforced in the future. Enforcements in protecting IP rights in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) almost don’t exist, despite that they are legally protected. Before declaring independence in 1960, IP in the DRC was protected by Belgium.
The DRC is a part of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a UN organization, and the World Trade Organization (WTO), and therefore is under the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The TRIPS Agreement is a legal international agreement signed by all member nations of the WTO. On September 23, 2013, the UN intellectual property agency urged that markets be more easily accessible, especially to developing countries. The WIPO has launched an IP policy and has trained IP officers in the DRC. These actions have increased the overall growth in the GDP of the DRC, but not extremely significantly.
The DRC believes that stricter IP laws will harm the economy in the short-term, due to the country not being able to produce as much IP as developed countries. On the other hand, educating the DRC about IP protection and policies will help the expand the economy in the long-term. IP laws and regulations should be imposed depending on a country’s needs. As a developing and third world country, the DRC would like to see better enforcement of IP laws. Third world countries encourage looser IP protection because their economies are much less advanced, and also encourage laws giving developing countries time to reverse engineer IP that is unpatentable. The DRC suggests that the UN imposes sanctions on countries that steal foreign IP, as well as working towards treaties regarding more specific IP.
