Dakar, 18 September (APS) – The Director of Industrial Property, Talla Samb, stressed on Wednesday the need for staff of Collective Management Organizations (OCG) of the African Intellectual Property Organization (OAPI) to upgrade their skills to take greater advantage of the opportunities offered by cultural content.
“There is no need to state that the upgrading of OGC personnel in the OAPI area in the online exploitation of protected cultural content and the public domain constitutes a boon and a necessary step to take greater advantage of the opportunities offered by this cultural content,” he declared.
To do this, he believes that a series of capacity building “is necessary, particularly on the legal issues raised by the online exploitation of cultural content.”
Mr. Samb was speaking at the opening ceremony of a regional seminar on the adaptation of OAPI space OGCs to the online exploitation of protected cultural content and the public domain.
This meeting, he said, is part of OAPI’s vision to enable OGCs to “ensure better capture of flows generated by the online exploitation of cultural content through the improvement of their governance and training on the rights issues raised by the online exploitation of cultural content.”
In this regard, the director of industrial property indicated that the “flows generated by the online exploitation of cultural content, digital platforms offer numerous opportunities for cultural industries.”
“Thanks to digital transformation, “cultural industries can reach a global audience without traditional geographical constraints,” he explained, stressing that content such as “films, music, books, works of art, exhibitions, easily distributed online, allow creators to reach a much wider audience.”
According to him, “digital transformation has thus opened the way to new economic models such as subscription, online sales, downloading, targeted advertising, creative collaboration”.
All these digital tools, according to him, beyond facilitating collaboration between artists, authors, musicians and content creators, “promote the conservation and preservation of cultural and artistic heritage” through in particular “the innovative means offered by digital technologies”.
“In order to enable the capture of new financial flows generated by the online exploitation of cultural content, a common strategy for the exploitation of said content and an action plan were developed and enriched by the participants in a regional seminar organized in Douala from December 18 to 20, 2023”, recalled the deputy director of OAPI, Mondésir Oualou Panouala.
With regard in particular to OGCs and with a view to better capturing the flows generated by the online exploitation of cultural content, he specified that it had been “suggested that the governance of OGCs be improved and that training be provided on the legal issues raised by the online exploitation of cultural content”.
Based on this observation, Mondésir Oualou Panouala is of the opinion that this seminar will ultimately enable “the strengthening of the capacities of OGCs in the OAPI area on issues of governance and law in the online exploitation of cultural content”.
MK/FKS/OID
