Museveni Wants Law On Intellect Rights Softened

By Cyprian MusokePRESIDENT Yoweri Museveni has called for a worldwide compromise on the question of Intellectual Property rights (IPR) so that the rights of both the poor and rich are protected.Museveni was speaking at the Commonwealth Partnership for technology management (CPTM) discussion at the Athenaeum Club in London on Tuesday.He said to scrap IPR laws would be unfair to investors, but what was needed was to ‘reimburse their costs’ so as to allow cheaper copies of their products to be produced for the poor.He said it was in line with this approach to the IPR question that Uganda contributed us$2m to the world AIDS fund.“We need to compensate drugs companies for their inventions so that we get cheaper drugs,” the president said.He asked the CPTM to serve as a think-tank for new ideas on contentious issues like IPR, which would then be sold to bigger fora such as the United Nations for action by governments.Museveni repeated his call to developed countries to open up their markets to the developing world in order to correct development imbalances.He praised the US for opening up its markets.Ends