Intellectual property (IP) rights are crucial to the economic growth of any country as it drives inventions, innovation, and the creation of new and better jobs, the Minister of Trade and Industry, Ms Hanna Tetteh, said on Monday. ‘It is the key to competitiveness for countries, industries and individual firms and the process by which solutions are developed to socio and economic challenges. It is also a source of improvement in the quality of all aspects of our material life.” Madam Hanna Tetteh was addressing a workshop organized for the National Intellectual Property Policy Committee to help the five-month old committee find its footing in its task of formulating the National Intellectual Property Policy. She said currently, policies on intellectual property were scattered amongst policy documents, such as the National Drug Policy, Ghana Industrial Policy, and Cultural policy. Madam Hanna Tetteh therefore admonished the members to bring their rich experience to reflect in the formulation of a national intellectual property policy. ‘We are confident that with a national intellectual property policy, a regulatory framework in place and the necessary awareness created in the use of intellectual property rights as a tool to add value to one’s creativity and ingenuity, we will unearth in our country many more inventors and thereby make the dream of wealth creation, poverty alleviation and prosperity of the country a reality’, Ms Tetteh said. Mr Martin Saladin, Counsellor at the Swiss Embassy, pledged the commitment of the government of Switzerland to the development of a modern system of intellectual property policy. Participants for the two day workshop would be taken through the introduction to developing intellectual property, key elements for consideration in national IP policy, importance of copyright to economic development, industrial property as a tool for market expansion, patent information for innovation and business and the IP situation in Ghana. Other topics include; building IP institutions for Ghana’s development; challenges and prospects, formulation of the intellectual property strategy, identification of the key IP system necessary to drive the national priorities and formulating strategies and key IP Policy orientation. Source: GNA