Mr Kow Sessah Acquaye, State Attorney and Deputy Head at the Registrar General’s Department of the Republic of Ghana, takes us through how intellectual property connects to archives and use rights at the recently concluded online forum on “Archives Access And Exploitation: Dealing With Rights And IP Restrictions.”
According to Mr Acquaye, Ghana roughly has a whole ministry of communication and digitalisation, which has its own policy on archives, access and digitalisation and everything that comes with it.
Then there is the Public Records And Archives Administration Department (PRAAD), which engages on a series of trips of moving information from analogue to digital.
Acquaye describes Ghana’s archive collections as a work in progress, with institutions that have policies, implement them, and regulate. The ecosystem also includes feeder institutions such as universities, which create an entire archival access and exploitation ecosystem. According to Mr Acquaye, the final leg is the ecosystem’s uses.
To simplify matters, he defines intellectual property as property of the intellect. It is the work of the mind, some more visible than others. For example, copyright is the right to copy.
They deal with commercial information, including trademarks, industrial designs, and patents. They assist in the establishment of the fundamental boundaries of information access.
You may watch a clip of Mr Acquaye’s video here, in which he answers the question, “How does intellectual property relate to archives and usage rights?”
