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From May 18 - 20, 2023, the Ateneo de Manila University through the Ateneo Intellectual Property Office (AIPO) shared their experiences on technology transfer and technology management with stakeholders in Brunei Darussalam. Hosted by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) together with the Brunei IP Office (BruIPO), several meetings and lectures were held to promote and encourage the protection of IP to students, researchers, faculty, and as well as government and industry leaders.
The Ateneo de Manila University was represented by Mr Steve Chaves of AIPO, and WIPO was represented by Mr Ye Min Than. On their first day, the two met key officials and were given a tour of a local innovation institution known as the Brunei Innovation Lab (BIL), an innovation ecosystem facilitator that provides technopreneurs advanced access to platforms that aid develop, test, and bring to market new use cases. BIL is a partnership between four companies: Brunei Shell Petroleum (BSP), Shell LiveWIRE Brunei, DST Digital (DST), and Darussalam Enterprise (DARe).
Group photo of WIPO, AIPO, BruIPO, and BIL executives
Mr Than and Mr Chaves had a chance to meet DST’s CEO, Radin Sufri Radin Basiuni, and his team to present AIPO’s technology transfer experience in the Philippines and discuss Brunei's innovation ecosystem, access to technology, commercialization of IP, and possible collaboration efforts to advance overall innovation in Brunei.
Group photo of WIPO, AIPO, BruIPO, and DST executives
The two representatives also met with Mr Adna Rahman, Head of the Entrepreneurship Innovation Center (EIC), and his team under the Ministry of Education of Brunei. The meeting revolved around the different engagements that EIC has done in training and supporting students from primary, secondary, and tertiary schools with pragmatic education in innovation and entrepreneurship.
Group photo of WIPO, AIPO, BruIPO, and Brunei Ministry of Education officials
A meeting was also held with Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD), the largest university in Brunei which has been active in R&D in various fields. Following presentations from AIPO and WIPO, Professor Dr. Mohd Ayub Sadiq, Assistant Vice Chancellor and Vice President (Innovation & Enterprise), and his team brought up issues related to ways to promote more technology transfer (rather than mere patenting and publishing), capacity building of technology management staff (patent search and landscaping), and support to entrepreneurs in using IP more effectively for business growth and competitiveness. The meeting concluded with exploring possible solutions to these issues in the current local contexts as well as collaborating on the future implementation of such solutions.
Group photo of WIPO, AIPO, BruIPO, and UBD officials
The Brunei visit ended with a summative meeting with the Brunei IPO team in the Attorney General’s Chambers, facilitated by Puan Norazizah Binte Haji Jaafar, Head/Deputy Registrar of BruIPO. They discussed on the findings from the productive series of visits and how to effectively follow up on all the engagements done in the past days.
Group photo of WIPO, AIPO, and BruIPO officials
Why collaborate with the Philippines?
The Philippines ranked 59th among the 132 economies featured in the Global Innovation Index (GII) 2022. The GII is an annual report done by the WIPO after ranking world economies according to their innovation capabilities. Consisting of roughly 80 indicators, grouped into innovation inputs and outputs, the GII aims to capture the multi-dimensional facets of innovation. In 2022, it was recorded that the Philippines performed best in its Business sophistication (knowledge absorption, linkages, knowledge workers) and its weakest performance was in Institutions (policies for business and entrepreneurship, regulatory laws, and political environment). Despite this, the Philippines performed above the ASEAN average in Knowledge and technology outputs, which means it produced more innovation outputs relative to its level of innovation investments in 2022. This is a significant indicator of how effective technology transfer (the process of transforming innovations into products and services that benefit society) is in the country, which may serve as a model or inspiration to its neighboring countries such as Brunei Darussalam.
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For more information about AIPO and its services, please visit www.aipo.ateneo.edu or email them at aipo@ateneo.edu. You may also check out their Facebook and LinkedIn pages for the latest updates and announcements.
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