The Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) will be embarking on a wide-scale IP training and information crusade with top Philippine universities in the second half of 2019, in a bid to push intellectual property training in the Philippine academe.

This is as IPOPHL takes on education and sports as the key theme of the National Intellectual Property Rights Month this April.

“We’re going beyond IP awareness and information, and switching to higher gear with an extensive and systematic approach in teaching and learning intellectual property. We will begin with talking to university officials to impress on them the centrality of intellectual property in law, business, in the sciences, in liberal arts, and technology courses; This roundtable discussion with universities will hopefully set the ball rolling on this,” said Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) Director General Josephine R. Santiago.

“Ultimately, with the endorsement of university officials, we can reach students and emphasize to them that intellectual property is relevant in almost all academic disciplines – seize the opportunity to benefit from it when it is put in action, like if research leads to patentable technology or in marketing a business, how trademarks be strategically used,” she added.

This sweeping campaign is a project under IPOPHL’s IP Academy, and will see IPOPHL engage leading Philippine universities nationwide in a series of 2-day high-level roundtable discussion.

This will serve as the opportunity for IPOPHL to underscore intellectual property’s relevance and value-adding in specific academic disciplines.

“We will invite industry players in this dialogue as well, so we can concretise the many ways by which IP is ‘in action’ in these varied disciplines. We will be inviting inventors and industry representatives from pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, and data analytics (among others) to impart to the professors in the sciences, the significance of protecting their research through the appropriate IP protection,” said IP Academy’s supervising consultant, Dr. Frederick Romero.

“For lecturers in the business / entrepreneur courses, where trademark knowledge is highly valuable, we will invite brand managers and marketing professionals to teach how to leverage intangible assets for business growth. For liberal arts professors , for example, we’ll be having composers, song-writers, and publishers in attendance to attest to them how to capitalise on their copyrighted works, considering the prolific amount of written work they produce in the academe,” he added.

The IPOPHL will also undertake discussion on how the HEIs may prepare for the impact on 4th Industrial Revolution.

This initial salvo will be followed up by a discipline-specific training workshop for a more targeted training session on the intellectual property relevant to their field, later on.

This will also open the door for IP Academy’s other proposed programs with HEIs such as WIPO-IPOPHL Summer School, IP Bootcamp, IP Executive Internship Program, IPOPHL Best Paper Competition, and IP Debate Competition among others.

“Universities and colleges are rich arsenals of creativity and innovation. It’s time we fully tapped this source, and imbibe to this sector the value and worth of their intellectual property early on,” DG Josephine R. Santiago ended.

IPOPHL is celebrating April as National Intellectual Property Rights Month by virtue of Proclamation No. 190 s. 2017.