Chairperson, hon members, today we are here to discuss a Bill that was conceived by the Department of Science and Technology some 15 years ago.
This Bill is called, in the short title of the Bill, the Intellectual Property Rights from Publicly Financed Research and Development Bill of 2002. This Bill seeks to provide for the effective utilisation of intellectual property.
A child who was conceived 15 years ago would be on the verge of completing his/her Grade 9 today. This Bill is a new-born baby that is delivered today. The department underwent strenuous labour pains to make sure that this new-born baby is nurtured and ready to be implemented by the department. In comparing this Bill to a 15-year-old child, I was not complaining. I just wanted to elaborate on the efforts made by the department to compile such an accurate piece of legislation.
This was a complicated, but a straightforward Bill. The public hearings held by the portfolio committee assisted a great deal to understand the content of the Bill in its absolute simplicity.
I, therefore, want to thank those companies and institutions who participated in the public hearings. Without your contributions, relevant information would have been excluded from this Bill. Your quest for this Bill to become an Act of Parliament helped us to realise that you are not content just to be spectators, but rather wanted to be participants in assisting our government to grow the economy.
Since this Bill has undergone various stages, like consultation, benchmarking and learning about best practice from other countries, I have no doubt in my mind that the object of this Bill will be achieved without any hindrance.
The then government did not have adequate protection in place to protect intellectual property rights that were publicly financed. That was a loophole that led to the commercialisation and offshore selling of South African research information without any meaningful benefit to the South African population. This Bill will make sure that this will never happen again. The big question we have to ask is: How will ordinary people of South Africa benefit from this piece of legislation?
We were assured during the public hearings that this Bill will create jobs for the poor and also lead to true commercialisation, tax will be generated and that will mean that those taxes will be deposited into the tax and fiscal coffers. And also, it will mean that social development programmes will be achieved through this piece of legislation.
This Act also creates a space for broad-based black economic empowerment. This means that it is not an exception to other pieces of legislation where there is a call for each department to make sure that this policy of black economic empowerment is entrenched in order for those previously disadvantaged people to participate in the country's economy.
Another question asked by us as a portfolio committee is: How will the government achieve the objects of the Bill? By making sure that it incentivises intellectual property creators as people, which would make them more innovative in their research work. And, more importantly, the effective monitoring of the implementation of this Bill will make sure that the government achieves the objectives of the Bill.
What will the government receive in return? The government will make sure that it provides for preferential exclusives. Exclusive licences would be given to those intellectual creators who seek to use intellectual property in ways that provide optimal benefit to the economy and quality of life for the people of the Republic.
Terms of reference on how to go about this knowledge enrichment are clearly stipulated in the Bill. My learned colleagues will elaborate on this.
Although our institutions of higher learning have been doing research for quite some time, this Bill also encourages them to produce more innovative research skills, and in return their institutions will get more respect and also increase their integrity.
Knowledge is power. We, therefore, should be at the forefront of advocating knowledge to our researchers so that it would benefit the country and realise the betterment of our people. Amandla kuloo ndawo. [We support this view.]
Before my time ends, I want to support this Bill on behalf of all women in the Department of Science and Technology, in particular, Dr Mehlomakhulu, the deputy-director of the department, who is a woman by birth and a leader in her own right. [Time expired.] [Applause.]