In the two-day conference organized by the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IP Philippines) and the Commission on Higher Education (CHED), Jared Nyagua, WIPO senior program officer, said that the three industries represent around 30 percent of the protected and commercialized technologies in the world. Telecommunications accounts for 10.5 percent, while IT and pharmaceutical stand at 10.1 percent and 9.3 percent respectively. Nuclear engineering (24.5 percent) and telecommunications (15.5 percent), meanwhile, are the fastest growing areas of technology.

“Creation and protection of IP assets may entail investments at the onset but there are rewards. The US, for instance, spends about $200 billion in research and development annually. However, it also has the most number of filings in the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) at 53,147 out of the total 158,400 international applications in 2007,” Nyagua said during his presentation. The US is followed by Japan (27,732), Germany (17,889) and France (6,523).

On the other hand, North East Asia countries account for 25.4 percent of PCT filings for four consecutive years, 2004 to 2007. Republic of Korea, China and Japan are among the top 10 countries in the region that posted high volumes of PCT filings. Three companies from the region made it to the list of leading PCT filing firms in 2007: Matsushita (Japan), Huawei Technologies (China), and Toyota (Japan). Patent filings through the PCT, Nyagua explained, are indicators of protected technology.

Similarly, Atty. Adrian S. Cristobal, IP Philippines Director General, said during his opening address that patent filings are indicators of a nation’s economic, innovative and technological development. Currently, patent filings are low in the country, he revealed, and the Philippines has been consistently occupying a low rank in global surveys on innovation. “Patent reform must be carried out in pursuit of the country’s economic development. Patent reform will be in the form of increased patent filing count and commercialization of inventions,” Cristobal said.

Nyagua presented to a gathering of close to 200 high level officials of state universities and colleges (SUC) and higher education institutions (HEI), Philippine government agencies, legislators, venture capitalists and other representatives from the private sector. He is among four international speakers of the conference. “Universities and research and development institutions (RDI) are the main sources of innovations, and a national IP strategy such as the
Philippine IP Policy Strategy (PIPPS) is crucial for facilitating innovation,” Nyagua said.      

The PIPPS was presented to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in the National Innovation Summit in November 2007. IP Philippines led in crafting the policy strategy, which identified patent reform and universities and RDI as two of eight sectors representing the country’s IP assets.

“The prevailing culture among universities and public RDI is ‘publish or perish’. The challenge now is to move from the accepted tradition of publication to the actual commercialization of their work. The sector can contribute considerably to the country’s economic development if it builds a culture of commercialization,” Cristobal said.