IPOPHL Presents the IP Academy 

During Intellectual Property Convergence 2018 forum

The Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) presented the newly-created Intellectual Property (IP) Academy at the Intellectual Property Convergence 2018, underlining the IPOPHL’s strengthened push for education.

A particular strategy under NIPS is broadening intellectual education by way of curriculum enhancement and undertaking research, to be handled by the newly-established Intellectual Property (IP) Academy.

“Establishing the IP Academy is a concrete step in integrating IP education in the broader Philippine education system, while also training our institutional partners in the academe, the government, and private sector so they may apply IP in their field,” said IPOPGL Director General Josephine R. Santiago.

The IP Academy will serve as a national center for training and research on intellectual property.

Part of IPOPHL’s broader strategy to mainstream intellectual property in education is aiming to formulate a dedicated IP policy for the basic education, the higher education, and technical vocation levels in collaboration with the Department of Education, the Commission on Higher Education, and theTechnical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA).

A comprehensive training program on IP for education sector officials and staff, basic education teachers, and other stakeholders will be part of the IP Academy’s goals.

In the area of research and development, IPOPHL intends to strengthen linkages with universities and research development institutions to improve technology transfer - transferring technology from universities to industry, to be applied or developed into technology. 

In the 2017 edition of the Global Innovation Index, developed by Cornell University, INSEAD, and WIPO, the Philippines ranked 73rd out of 127 economies, improving by one place over the previous year.

One of the innovation input pillars in the index measures university-industry collaboration and the Philippines ranked in the bottom half among eight Asean countries (Singapore, Malaysia, Viet Nam, Thailand, Brunei Darussalam, Philippines, Indonesia, and Cambodia). 

This is unfortunate as the Philippines landed in the top half of this same group in terms of quality of scientific publications - signalling that Philippine universities are producing top-notch research work but which seldom translate to usable technology. 

Institutionalising the IP Academy is one of the proposed amendments to the Intellectual Property Code of the Philippines.

While the inserted provision in IP Code will institutionalise the creation of the Academy, the office aims to submit a separate executive order to President Rodrigo R. Duterte, to fast-track the initial staffing and organisational requirements.