Micro and Small Scale Entrepreneurs have been urged to protect their creativity by registering their products and services under intellectual property rights, to enable them have exclusive rights over their innovations.
Mr Kwame Fosu, Director, Legal Affairs, Ministry of Trade and Industry said the move would also enable entrepreneurs to increase the opportunity to commercialise their new and improved products and deal with violation of
their intellectual property rights.
Addressing participants at an awareness creation seminar on intellectual property rights in Accra on Wednesday, Mr Fosu said the
platform had become necessary as a result of the rapid growth of intellectual property rights on the global market.
He said the seminar was in line with the Swiss-Ghana Intellectual Property Right programme designed to assist Ghana to modernise intellectual property systems to support national developmental strategies.
It would also facilitate poverty reduction and trade enhancing measures and meet World Trade Organisation and Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights obligation.
Participants were taken through the concepts of Intellectual Property (IP) and Procedures required to obtain IP rights, infringement and
enforcement issues and steps needed by IP creators to benefit from the IP system.
Mr Fosu said judges would be involve in the awareness creation programme to enable them to have an idea of handling IP issues at the courts.
Dr Dominic Ayine, Lecturer, Faculty of Law, University of Ghana, Legon explained that intellectual rights was a "knowledge or information that has a commercial value" and if entrepreneurs failed to protect that right,
creativity could be undermined.
He said it would guard against infringement of IP by firms or individual competitors and increase profits through licensing.
It would also step up customer confidence in the products establishing a brand and enhance market value and competitiveness.
Dr Ayine asked entrepreneurs to seek legal advice on IP rights to make the right decisions to protect their innovations and creativity.
Mrs Grace Issahaqe, State Attorney at the Registrar General's Department, said registering IP rights whether under trade mark, patent or
industrial designs took between six months and one-and-a-half years.