ENTREPRENEURS IN ARUA CITY, EMPOWERED ON INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS AND BUSINESS FORMALIZATION

Arua City senior commercial officer Jobel Ayiko, empowering participants during the sensitization workshop in Arua city.

By Onzoma Albert

Arua City

The Uganda Registration Services Bureau (URSB) has called on entrepreneurs in Arua City and the broader West Nile region to formalize their businesses and register their creations. This process helps to protect local innovations from unauthorized use and provides access to benefits such as credit, government contracts, and expanded markets.

The call was made during a stakeholder sensitization workshop organized by Arua City, on the importance of understanding and adhering to trade laws, especially as trade continues to evolve at regional, national, and global levels.

Fatuma Nakate, a Registration Officer with URSB, encouraged innovators, entrepreneurs, musicians, and creators to register their businesses and deepen their knowledge on intellectual property rights to maximize the benefits of their work.

“We encourage the people who are into innovations, businesses, branding and manufacturing to get to know more about intellectual property rights, what it can do for you and the value addition into your business and work, we appeale to them to come to us so that their ideas can be protected and they benefit from them,” she said.

Matua Job Richard, the Assistant Resident City Commissioner of Arua, commended the efforts of URSB and Arua city in organizing the workshop, urging residents of West Nile to take advantage of these opportunities to learn about intellectual property rights and adopt legal frameworks that can help them monetize their hard work.

“When we focus on empowering our people here let us know that the people will go regional in their perspectives, to empower and formalize our people is very important, so therefore we must be very serious the pleasure of a place is ours it is only us who can make our place great, I tell you in your various capacities you can do something and it excels,” he said.

Musician Kennedy Madira, popularly known as JM Kennedy, also appealed to regional musicians and content creators to understand the legal rights and frameworks governing their operations to protect their works.

“Now we have a legal framework in place for the industry which will help us musicians and content creators we really need to understand this new legal frameworks so that we work within the law and also us this to benefit financially” he said.

The workshop focused on various intellectual property rights, including trademarks, copyrights, patent rights, and industrial designs, relevant to traders, media practitioners, book writers, and the business community in Arua City.

Registering these rights helps safeguard business names, innovations, and creative works from illegal copying or misuse. Formal businesses are eligible for government tenders and can leverage their registered rights as collateral for financing.

Additionally, URSB provides affordable, alternative dispute resolution methods that avoid lengthy court processes. Specifically, the Trademarks Act protects brand names, logos, and slogans.

The Copyright and Neighboring Rights Act covers literary, musical, and artistic works, while the Industrial Property Act oversees innovations, patents, and utility models.

These legal frameworks collectively aim to foster business growth, protect creators, and promote the local economy by ensuring innovators can benefit fully from their intellectual investments.