The Shuttleworth Foundation released a briefing on the World Intellectual Property day that was held on 26 April 2008. Open Knowledge and free information infrastructure remain key to South Africa's participation in the global knowledge economy, in ensuring that South Africa builds a strong innovation sector, with a knowledgeable workforce skilled in integrating digital technologies and innovating on open platforms.
Over the last year the South African government has shown insightful leadership. The SA government released the Ministerial Interoperability Operating Standards, which sets open standards for government deployment of technology. Open standards such as the Open Document format make it easier for citizens to interact with government by ensuring that citizens are not forced to obtain products from a single vendor.
The Minister for Public Service and Administration, Ms Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, addressed the 3rd Idlelo Conference and emphasised the importance of open standards for innovation. The Minister pointed out that whereas patents are important in some industries they are inappropriate in the software industry, placing artificial restrictions to competition and innovation by Africans.
South Africa has been supportive of the Development Agenda which was adopted last year by the World Intellectual Property Organisation. The Development Agenda aims to make the UN agency more responsive to the requirement of its members, most of whom are developing countries. The World Intellectual Property Organisation will be choosing a new Director General this year, and deciding how to implement the development agenda. Will the developed countries support the Development Agenda so that more people in developing world have access to medicines and more African children have access to learning materials?
The South African standards body, SABS, joined standards bodies in Brazil, India and China in resisting the global campaign to make the Microsoft created OOXML specification into a second document standard incompatible with existing Open Document Format. Unfortunately the International Standards Body adopted the specification as a second document standard, despite the views of the emerging economies, and most populous countries, raising concerns about the future of ISO as an independent standards organisation.
During 2007 the further concentration of the already concentrated book publishing market in South Africa was averted when the Competition Commission prohibited the local subsidiaries from merging in the Pearson & Harcourt international merger, but the text book market it still too concentrated, so that textbooks are not as diverse, appropriate, and affordable as they should be.
January 2008 saw the signing of the Cape Town Declaration on Open Educational Resources by thousands . Teachers, learners, and universities in the open educational resources movement are doing what they can to ensuring that educational resources are open and available to the many millions in the developing countries.
Parliament will shortly be presented with legislation on patenting the results of taxpayer funded research. Universities have raised concerns about the privatisation of public knowledge.
The Shuttleworth Foundation and the Trade Law Centre for Southern Africa have launched an open on-line review of the Copyright Act, so that artists, software engineers, bloggers and ordinary consumers can comment on copyright law that affects all our lives. The review has a wiki for comments on the copyright law.