ADDIS ABABA — Ethiopian Intellectual Property Authority (EIPA) announced that a two years bilateral cooperation action plan agreement was signed with China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) at Beijing.
The agreement was signed between EIPA's Director General, Woldu Yemisel and CNIPA's Commissioner, Shen Changyu last week.
According to the information sent through social media platform to The Ethiopian Herald that the two bodies have agreed to strengthen their agreement to work together and have signed an agreement to implement the plan in various intellectual property fields in the next two years.
At the signing ceremony, EIPA's Director General Woldu Yemisel said that the agreement would help to strengthen cooperation on intellectual property, facilitate the transformation of knowledge and information, and Ethiopia gain more experience from BRICS.
According to Woldu, the agreement is to provide educational and training opportunities in Chinese universities aiming at increasing the capacity of the authority's
human resources; it includes informational, legal, technical and related issues.
"The bilateral cooperation has been strengthened in a new way in order to take the relationship of the two institutions to a higher level. It means that the agreement is useful to widening programs on capacity building training, facilitating technology and innovation on intellectual property, and protecting social intellectual property," the Director General said.
By the same token, Ethiopia has participated in the 3rd BELT and ROAD Conference of Heads of Intellectual Property Institutions of Associated Countries whilst the country agreed on future works and obtain meaningful outcome in that regard, Woldu cited.
CNIPA's Commissioner, Shen Changyu on his part said that the two countries cooperation in the field of intellectual property is substantial. The agreement was signed because the two parties need to enlarge the intellectual property engagement alike economic, trade, and science and technology of the two countries' government.
The Commissioner underlined that the agreement was made the day after Ethiopia joined the BRICS member countries, thus it will increase the cooperation of the aforementioned institutions. Therefore, the agreement helps to increase the protection and encouragement of intellectual property in Ethiopia, he noted.