Philrice pledges support to IPOPHL’s strategic assistance program

The Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) has secured support from the Philippine Rice Research Center (PhilRice) for its strategic, ‘end-to-end’ support program for IP creators, the ‘Mind2Market’ program, signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) at the IP Convergence forum on Friday.

The MOU with the Department of Agriculture’s technology development arm, Philrice,   was inked on Friday during the IP Convergence, before 200 attendees from the intellectual property community.  

Philrice is the first government agency to join the Mind2Market Program, essentially agreeing to be part of the official network of agencies to support IP owners through IP Creation, IP Protection, and IP Utilisation.

“The Mind2Market program spans support throughout the full intellectual property cycle, from creation to utilization (commercialisation). We made a pledge to hand-hold the IP creators from assisting them at that crucial cross-over through what the IP community calls "the valley of death" between creation, protection, and utilization,” says IPOPHL Documentation, Information, and Technology Transfer Bureau (DITTB) Director Atty. Mary Grace “Itchie” Cruz-Yap.

“But no one agency can tackle all the needs of an intellectual property owner, and that’s why we’re building a network of government agencies to shepherd IP owners through the IP life cycle,” explained Dir. Cruz-Yap of the IPOPHL DITTB also known as the “Innovation Bureau.”

The flagship program operates on inter-agency cooperation, allowing government agencies to come in and lend their agency-specific support in any of three stages.

Being a  research and technology development body, Philrice’s contribution will be in IP creation; Philrice can help shape and steer their researchers’ output beyond academic concepts and towards agritechnology development. Moreover, with technical training and know-how imparted by IPOPHL throughout development of  the agritechnology , it stands a better chance to be considered patentable.

IPOPHL, as the main agency implementing this assistance program, will be there throughout the IP life cycle, from IP Creation to IP Utilisation.

For example, when fund-granting agencies join the Mind2Market program, IPOPHL can  connect IP owners with these agencies to provide financial assistance, especially to the MSME IP creators, during prototyping and patent prosecution stage, when technological research and innovation often falter.

Eventually, IPOPHL aims to bring the IP creator’s intellectual properties towards commercialization by providing a platform for matching the IPs with potential adaptors, with the assistance of other government agencies like the Board of Investments (BOI) and private entities as well, like the different Chambers of Commerce, and private investors who are all targeted to be part of the network.

Starting from the institutionalization of the Mind2Market network, IPOPHL plans to develop an online linkage channel or a central platform for communication and coordination of the agencies with the IP creators. What follows will be a stock-taking of all IP and innovation-geared programs of the agencies and private institutions, so these may be streamlined and connected. This portfolio of services of the Mind2Market agencies will be then made available to the public.

Eventually a Helpdesk will be established with dedicated managers assigned to shepherd the IP creators and manage the Mind2Market portfolio.

The idea to shepherd IP creators throughout the IP life cycle was an initiative of Director General Josephine R. Santiago, seeing the need for an institutionalized and comprehensive mechanism for coordination with other government agencies. This is part of the Director General Santiago’s 7-point agenda, which she created upon taking helm of the agency.