To thrive in these unprecedented economic and digital times, organizations need to embrace creativity and innovation. Through innovation an organization can achieve competitive advantage which creates room for growth and sustainability. An organization’s innovative climate is driven by its human resource. Employees breathe life into innovation through their knowledge, skills and abilities; while employers are the driving force, they provide the employees with the required environment and resources to innovate. In Kenya, the main hindrance towards the development of new inventions is the lack of awareness of laws and legal rights of the employees and employers related to ownership of intellectual property of the invention. Due to this gap, innovators are exploited, this demotivates them from actualising their creative potential, for fear that the organization or employer will take all the credit. In a recent South African case of Vodacom (Pty) Ltd v Makate and Another (401/2022) [2024] ZASCA the Supreme Court ordered Vodacom to compensate Mr. Makate in billions for the ‘please call me’ idea he invented when he was an employee at Vodacom, although the idea was wholly operationalised by Vodacom. Such lawsuits against employers and organizations can be prevented by implementing the rights granted to each party under the law. This Article will discuss how the law creates a balance between the rights of the employer and the innovator employee to ensure both benefit from the innovation. Innovations are governed by the Industrial Property Act, 2001 (IPA). The general rule under […]
