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Nigeria patent registration low at 100 in 21 months

notap

Ife Ogunfuwa

Nigeria registered a total of 100 patents from January 2018 to September this year through the National Office for Technology Acquisition and Promotion.

It was gathered that NOTAP, an agency with a mandate to assist in the patenting of all inventions and innovations carried out by government-funded research institutes and the private sector, received 132 applications for patents in 2018 out of which 55 were approved and researchers issued certificates.

From January to date, it was learnt that the agency also registered 45 patents out of 55 applications filed by researchers across the country.

Information gathered showed that 61 applications for patents were still pending from last year.

According to NOTAP,  an invention is granted a patent when it is novel, has an inventive step and capable of industrial application.

The Director-General, NOTAP, Dr Ibrahim DanAzumi, recently said the introduction of Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer Offices in Nigerian research institutions had encouraged demand-driven researches, most of which were at the advanced stage of commercialisation.

The DG said the agency, in collaboration with the World Intellectual Property Organisation in 2006, moved to demystify technology by establishing Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer Offices in some Nigerian knowledge institutions.

He added that five IPTTOs were established at the pilot stage and since then, NOTAP had established 43 other IPPTOs across Nigeria in both public and private establishments, with some positive results coming from a couple of them.

Commenting on the level of innovation in the country, the Director, Delta State Innovation Hub, Chris Uwaje, said the sparse number of innovation and patents from Nigeria was as a result of inadequate research funding.

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“Countries that have a lot of patents have a threshold of research funding. It means that our country is not funding research adequately. The more research we fund, the more patents we can deliver,” Uwaje said.

He called for increased awareness on legal processes required to protect research findings and education on documents required for patent application.

Meanwhile, the 2019 Global Innovation Index, which measures innovation performance in countries globally, ranks Nigeria among the low-middle income countries that were underperforming in the creation and utilisation of innovations.

The study said Africa’s largest economy performed below expectations compared with the level of economic development in the country.

Other underperformers in the low-middle income group are Ghana, Zambia, El Salvador, Bolivia and Nicaragua.

According to the index, large emerging economies like Nigeria such as China, India, Mexico, Vietnam, Indonesia and South Africa recorded significant medical innovations as demand for improved health services rises.

The report on innovation ranking stated that Nigeria performed poorly in the areas of domestic credit to private sector, Wikipedia edits, creative goods export, high-tech net exports, ISO 9001 quality certificates, patents by origin and university/industry research collaboration.

The country, however, performed well in areas such as ease of getting credit, ease of protecting minority investors, microfinance gross loans as a percentage of the GDP, intensity of local competition, domestic market scale, knowledge-intensive employment, intellectual property payments, citable documents and national feature films.

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