IPO inks partnership agreement with PCARRD

         Efforts to promote intellectual property rights (IPRs) in the field of agriculture are further intensified with the signing of a memorandum of agreement (MOA) between the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) and the Philippine Council of Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources Research and Development (PCARRD).

Signatories were IPO Deputy Director Ireneo M. Galicia and PCARRD Executive Director Patricio S. Faylon. The MOA was signed at the PCARRD headquarters in Los Baños, Laguna.

In July this year, the promotion of IPR awareness in the agriculture sector was initiated with the groundbreaking tie-up of IPO with the Nueva Ecija-based Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice), which comes on the heels of the rapid global development in the agricultural biotechnology where PhilRice is an active player.

PCARRD, one of the five sectoral councils of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST), is the government's main arm in planning, coordinating, evaluating, and monitoring the national agricultural research program. 

It shepherds researchers and research managers of the National Agriculture and Resources Research and Development Network (NARRDN), comprised of national multi and single commodity and regional research and development (R&D) centers, in developing IPR management strategies applicable to their respective environments.

Under the MOA, both IPO and PCARRD agreed to make long-term commitments in the exchange of information and data significant in improving intellectual property system in relation to R&D initiatives in the agriculture, forestry and natural resources sectors.

IPO has committed to work jointly with PCARRD in formulating policies and strategies along with the primary goal of making the IP system work for the benefit of the agricultural field.

The MOA also commits the IPO to assist the council in capability building through the conduct of and assigning of resource persons in trainings, briefings and seminar-workshops on IP rights and management, development of training modules and providing post-training counseling to participants of the training and workshops conducted by PCARRD.

For its part, PCARRD will monitor the application of knowledge gained by its personnel from the trainings attended.

According to Galicia, the IPO fully believes in the important role of the IP system and management in the agriculture, forestry, environment and natural resources in promoting development in the country.

"As we encourage R&D activities in these very important areas, we need to make sure that the R&D products borne out of such activities are truly commercially viable and can be put to good and practical use by the public." Galicia said. 

IPO and PCARRD have actually teamed up already in several joint projects in the last five years through awareness seminars held in different regions nationwide among research managers and researchers.

In fact, PCARRD has now in place an IPR Working Group composed of specialists from all its divisions, including administrative staff, which monitors the application of IPR tools such as the confidentiality agreement in project evaluations.

This IPR Working Group has also done intellectual property audit for some biotechnology projects, which identified the approaches that would aid in minimizing infringement during commercialization.

With the MOA, immediately underway is a proposal to carry out a more comprehensive training for the enhanced capability building of PCARRD's R&D personnel in IPR management system.

Also in progress is an assessment of both IPO and PCARRD of the skills needed by the research community for the appropriate training module to facilitate the protection and transfer of intellectual property derived from R&D activities.