KAMPALA – The Uganda Registration Services Bureau (URSB) has commemorated the World Intellectual Property Day themed ‘Going for gold and sports’.
It will focus on raising awareness on advancing fair play in sports by fighting counterfeits and piracy in the sports industry tackling aspects such as sports uniforms, articles, and commentaries about the sporting events, brands, logos names of sports teams, broadcasts of live games and personal brands of athletes.
This is to enable the stakeholders to profit from their innovation and creations.
Mr. Bemanya Twebaze, the registrar general URSB said: “Counterfeit is something we have to take seriously because it affects us so much not only in sports but all other aspects and manifest is sports gears. It retards the growth of the industry since a lot of revenue is lost.”
He added: “I call upon all stakeholders to come up and fight this vice.”
The chairman board URSB, Ambassador Francis Butagira, said: “All these big things that have skyrocketed is because of intellectual property not minerals, gold but the brains and creations. As URSB we have put measures in place such as design, copyrights laws, trademarks but what has been lacking is the protection of innovation and that’s why we set up remedies and enforcement regimes to enable innovators profit from their efforts.”
Hon. Kahinda Otafiire , the minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, who was the chief guest said:” Sports is a global multi-million dollar global industry that generates investment through facilitation of stadiums, casting networks, employees a lot people, brings us together, entertains the general public, brings together sports events, tournaments and competitions, sports federation, teams, trainers, manufacturers of sports apparel, broadcasters, and corporate sponsors, among others.”
He added: “Today’s celebration is about promoting Intellectual property in games and sports and this year we shall have an opportunity to celebrate our heroes that have lifted the Uganda flag at national and international level. The government has put in place agencies and measures to boost this such as setting up an office at URSB, research, and development to empower and protect the rights of innovators.”
There have been achievements that have always brought pride to our nation and solidified our unity as Ugandans and this has been manifested by outstanding performances from personalities such as Dennis Onyango, Stephen Kiprotich, Dorcus Inzikuru, Joshua Cheptegei, and Moses Kiprop among others that have become household names.
