Decolonising Intellectual Property Law: An Afrocentric Approach

This book advocates for an Afrocentric approach to intellectual property (IP) law, using lessons from Nigeria’s past to encourage reform for the future of Africa’s legal IP landscape.

Highlighting the Eurocentric influence on the history of intellectual property law in Africa, the book demonstrates how this contradicts traditional African community culture. This book makes the case for legitimising cultural expressions of traditional communities despite the western legal framework within which they exist, reimagining a decolonised IP framework whereby African histories are centred. Questioning the fundamentals of the current IP landscape, such as the concept of eligibility in copyright which developed alongside European technological advances, the book also details the role of the courts in resolving IP disputes. It highlights Africa as a powerhouse of original, autonomous innovation, values, and traditions which predate the West’s concept of intellectual property. It illustrates the African experience of intellectual property from a pro-African perspective as shared by African authors.

This book will be of interest to researchers in the field of intellectual property, copyright, and patent law, as well as African law.

Dr Jade Kouletakis is an award-winning academic with experience teaching IP Law in multiple higher education institutions across two continents since 2014. She has been an invited keynote speaker at the University of Cambridge; University of St Andrews; and the Scottish Law and Innovation Network. She has published one of the ’most read’ articles and the second ’most read’ article on the websites of the Journal of World Intellectual Property (for whom she peer-reviews) and GRUR International: Journal of European and International IP Law. For REF 2021, she produced a maximum number of REF-qualifying outputs and submitted an Impact Case Study.

Nkem Itanyi is a law lecturer and academic researcher specialising in Intellectual Property Law. She has over two decades of experience in research and teaching across two continents. With an impressive record of academic scholarship, she holds a PhD in Intellectual Property Law from Queen’s University Belfast, an LLM in Corporate and Commercial Law from University College London, and an LLB (Hons) from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. Nkem’s research is active; she is well published in law and has been cited in leading peer-reviewed academic journals indexed in Clarivate Web of Science, Scopus, and other databases. Her expertise extends to Media Law and the intersection of IP and AI.