IPOPHL welcomes Cebu Normal University as 89th ITSO member

July 16, 2024 

The Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) has welcomed the Cebu Normal University (CNU) as the latest member of the Innovation and Technology Support Office (ITSO) Program, expanding the academic community’s access to much-needed intellectual property (IP) related support and inspiring other institutions to follow suit. 

With the addition of CNU, the ITSO 2.0 program now has 89 universities, colleges and research institutions as members. 

IPOPHL lauded CNU President Daniel A. Ariaso, Sr. for his commitment to scale up the university’s innovation outputs and performance.

“Upon learning about our ITSO program, Dr. Ariaso signed up to join the program immediately, without hesitation knowing that an ITSO office right on the grounds of the university is a significant push to the institution’s ever-growing role in the fields of innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship,” Barba said at the signing ceremony held last week in IPOPHL. 

“We urge more universities to follow in the footsteps of the CNU which, by setting up its own ITSO, is taking a concrete step to maintaining its lead as one of the region’s finest for quality tertiary education,” the IPOPHL chief added. 

The ITSO Program is IPOPHL’s flagship initiative to bolster innovation in the academe. The program aims to capacitate research and academic institutions to conduct prior art search, help with patent drafting and directly provide other IP-related assistance to their respective researchers, professors and students. 

Ariaso expressed the university’s commitment to supporting IPOPHL and the ITSO Program’s goals, seeing the partnership as a gateway to increased commercialization of CNU’s innovative and inventive outputs and transforming the university into a hotbed of technologies that can resolve real-world problems.

“Our goal is to empower our faculty, researchers, staff, students and even our local community to transform their groundbreaking ideas into protected intellectual property. This collaboration reflects our unwavering commitment to advancing innovation and intellectual property awareness, development and protection within our academic community. ” Ariaso added. 

Last week, the CNU held a soft launch of its ITSO Office. On July 19, the CNU will hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony, to be attended by IPOPHL Assistant Director Chamlette D. Garcia, to officially open its doors and handhold inventors throughout the IP registration process.

The CNU ranks third out of 10 universities in Cebu 40th out of 229 in the Philippines in the EduRank. The EduRank surveys thousands of universities and colleges annually based on academic reputation, research output and student feedback. 

The CNU also ranks 34th out of 365 universities nationwide in the 2024 Webometrics Ranking of World Universities 2024. The tally reflects the global performance, impact, relevance and visibility of higher education institutions. # # # (Janina Lim, Information Officer III)