Nigeria announces plans for IP exchange on Algorand

• Nigeria launches an Intellectual Property (IP) rights exchange market
• The platform that will allow the exchange of registered intellectual property rights and royalties
• The payments for these transactions will be in form of cryptocurrencies or digital tokens

The Government of Nigeria will be launching an Intellectual property (IP) rights exchange market that will allow Nigerians to sell their intellectual property rights within the platform.

The payments for these transactions will be in form of cryptocurrencies or digital tokens to facilitate the exchange of intellectual property rights and royalties.

This comes after reaching a 3-year deal with Developing Africa Group (DAG).

This will result in the creation of an IP platform that will allow the exchange of registered intellectual property rights and royalties across the global technopolis.

The IP market is a cloud-based solution that will propel the launch of a nation-driven wallet. This will facilitate royalties and payments from the commercial exchange of intellectual property rights.

What are Intellectual Property rights?

It is estimated that the intellectual property rights market is worth about $8.2 Billion and is set to skyrocket to a whopping $16.2 Billion by 2026 upon the integration of cloud-based solutions and systems.

Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) refer to the exclusive rights that creative people, entrepreneurs and designers have over their creations or projects. Intellectual property rights also encompass the rights of production, adaptation, stocking, performance and translation.

In Nigeria, there are four categories of Intellectual property rights namely; copyright, patents, industrial designs and trademarks. The Copyright Act protects the intellectual property rights of musical, academic, artistic works, broadcasting and cinematography projects.

The Patent and Designs Act formulates the laws that dictate how innovations and industrial-based designs can be brought forth.

Registration and Regulation of Trademarks are governed by the Trade Marks Act and the Merchandise Mark Act.

This move comes after Nigeria’s Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) formulated a new regulatory policy for the crypto ecosystem in the country on May 16, 2022. The regulation required that crypto products and service platforms provide a VASP license to the commission before initiating any crypto dealing

DAG’s role in this initiative

Developing Africa Group (DAG) also announced that it has laid out plans for the development of a crypto platform on the Algorand Blockchain and that the wallet and stable coin linked token will be handled by Koibanx

Koibanx and Algorand have transformed the crypto markets in Latin America through the creation of Citizen ID and information programs in El Salvador and Colombia.

DAG seeks to enhance the commercialization of intellectual property rights globally trade services and the creation of jobs in the Blockchain tech space. This will be achieved through an intellectual rights platform that cuts across different sectors and one that allows users to discover their IPR, register their IPR and commercialize it globally.

Representatives from DAG and the Blockchain platforms in Colombia, Algorand and Koibanx, have affirmed that the efforts to replicate the existing functionalities of the existing Blockchain-enabled systems in Latin America will be incorporated into the African market. This will be after the commencement of the initiative, before January 2023.

This will make Latin America and Africa the epicenter of crypto adoption and Blockchain technology implementation.