IP unlocks value of education, sports

The Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines  (IPOPHL) held its major conference, the 2019 Intellectual Property Convergence on April 26 exploring the ways intellectual property has unlocked the latent value of the sports and education sector. 

"We have become aggressive in the past two years in the way that we are pushing IP initiatives in all fronts because we want to spread quicker the benefits to the ultimate beneficiaries – the Filipino people," said IPOPHL Director General Josephine R. Santiago, in elaborating on IPOPHL's direction.

In the morning session, key personalities from the Commission on Higher Education (CHED), the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) spoke on IP’s value enhancement of the sectors they govern. 

Secretary Fortunato H. dela Pena, speaking on the need to harness the young talent of science-oriented high school students, said: “Senior high school students in Grade 11 and 12m are producing very worthwhile contribution in terms of innovation and output that can be protected by IP”. 

Isidro S. Lapena, Director General and Secretary of TESDA chimed  in on the Filipino manpower adopting to the rapid wave of change brought about by intellectual property.

“Technological advances and changes have started impacting society and our educational system should be ready. We all have responsibility to prepare students providing them the knowledge and understanding oft echnology , as well as skills to navigate the rapidly changing environment,” noted Secretary Lapena. 

DTI Undersecretary Ruth Castelo underscored the centrality of IP in a rapidly innovation-based economy citing the unprecedented boom of the business process outsourcing sector: “The DTI nurtures both the so-called heavy and traditional industries, but we also prop up the knowledge-intensive industries, foremost of which of course is our IT-BPO sector which stands as the second biggest foreign exchange earning sector next to OFW remittances. From end-2016 to mid-2017, that sector alone earned  $ 23.8 billion with a total workforce of 1.19 million Filipinos. That $ 23.8 billion - that is the power of knowledge.

In the afternoon, stakeholders from the sports industry - government, businesses, and the broadcasting industry - spoke of IP such as trademarks, industrial designs, and copyright allowing them to extract the value of their products and services. 

Ronald Rei Declarador co-founder of Ahon, a local brand catering to trail-runners, spoke of his company’s start from trying to find a technical solution to a particular problem for local trail-runners for outdoor gear, specifically for socks. 

“The gear we’ve been for trail runs,specifically gaiters. Locally we couldn’t find any gaiters so we made our own that’s adapted to our local environment because what we’ve been seeing is for Western countries,” said Declarador. 

On copyright and related rights fuelling the sports broadcasting industry, broadcasters  and sports content managers from TV5, UNTV, and ABS-CBN saw the increasing trend of data-driven sports content pulling in more fans to the sports.

“Apart from the traditional means of getting the data together, I noticed during the Olympics coverage of organizers providing a database of sports statistics, and these kinds of services that add new insight is a value-addition,” noted Patricia Bermudez Hizon,Sports head of TV5.

Dino Jacinto Laurena, Head of Integrated Sports, noted the value of protecting IP because of the value of basketball content which remains intact in terms of viewership,  as even re-broadcasts are still watched by Filipinos.