IPOPHL assisting academe, SMEs to profit from IP

through two-day IP commercialization coaching session

26 October 2018

The Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) in its bid for academe and small businesses to mutually benefit from intellectual property (IP), is aiming to transform the innovations borne out of universities’ research into usable and scalable solutions for the public.

IPOPHL, in partnership with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) / FIT Australia Program, gathered Philippine academic institutions and SMEs in the Bridging the Gap between National Academic Institutions and Industry in the Philippines workshop on October 22-23, 2018.

The two-day workshop tackled how to effectively convert the intellectual property of higher educational institutions (HEIs) into solutions to be used and marketed by businesses.

Without a platform for dialogue for the academe and industry, academic institutions may be deprived of potential revenues in failing to license their existing technology. Small businesses, on the other hand, not knowing that there are solutions to their operational challenges developed locally, may opt for more expensive, imported technology, said the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines.

For HEIs who have yet to develop technology, the fora provided an opportunity to directly collaborate with industry and jumpstart development of solutions that are already tailored to the SMEs needs.

Leveraging IP for competitiveness, estimating the value of technology in business, and negotiating and managing technology transfer agreements are among the topics slated for discussion.

Significantly, an exchange of industry’s needs and academe’s offered solutions, is on the agenda to match up available technology with the businesses’ gaps.

The cross-sectoral workshop is the third in a series of activities under WIPO/Funds-In-Trust (FIT) Australia’s Bridging the Gap project, aimed at gradually building up collaboration between academic institutions and the industry.

The WIPO- Funds in Trust (FIT) Australia program is an initiative to finance IP capacity-building projects in developing and least developing countries,and the Philippines is again a beneficiary of the program's second iteration