Philippines IP office seeks to form IP task forces

The Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) has issued an ambitious request for renewed corporate-academic relationships, as well as IP-focused task forces.

The 2021 Global Innovation Index (GII), which ranks 132 national economies on innovation capacity and output, reposted that South Korea broke into the top five for the first time this year, with five Asian economies featuring among the top 15 (Singapore, China, Japan and Hong Kong (China) the other four).

The positive momentum among select middle-income economies in recent years is one trend recognized in the research. “We didn’t have many other emerging economies constantly coming up in the recent past,” GII co-editor Sacha Wunsch-Vincent stated at a press conference yesterday. “This has changed, as seen by Turkey’s, India’s, the Philippines’, and Vietnam’s performances. This is tremendous news for the landscape from the standpoint of an economist.”

Despite this, the Philippines dropped one place in the overall ranking this year, therefore falling out of the top 50. The Philippines placed fourth among the 34 lower middle-income nations studied in the research, and 11th among the 17 economies in Southeast Asia, East Asia, and Oceania, despite its struggles this year.

The slight downturn has prompted IPOPHL to call for strengthened collaboration among the government, corporations and the academic sector. It is also pushing to form multi-sectoral task forces to address the areas of weakness identified in the GII report.

The task force model has helped the country improve its ranking in the World Bank’s Doing Business (DB) Survey. IPOPHL director general Rowel Barba remarked, “As a member of the National Innovation Council (NIC), IPOPHL is supporting the creation of task forces to address areas that hold us down in our GII performance – notably institutions, human capital and research, infrastructure, and market sophistication.” “[A task group] contributed to the Philippines’ drastic 29-notch improvement in 2020, to 95th out of 190 economies — the highest rank ever achieved by the country.” The NIC should follow suit, and we could not only improve our GII ranking, but also bring the country closer to the cutting edge of innovation.”

Barba also called for a quickening of ‘innovation alliances’ between the commercial sector and universities, as the country’s Innovation Act 2019 envisions. “Our agency is ready to help enhance this field with our program to capacitate the patent search, analysis, and drafting capacities of many universities, colleges, and research institutes,” he said.

Barba expects the growing trend she’s seen in recent years to continue as files increase and the office ramps up its efforts. The report’s calls to action, on the other hand, show how effective it can be in focusing IP offices’ thoughts on supporting change and encouraging a more inventive national environment.

Other offices have also issued their reaction to the report

Chile has risen one position (to 53rd) to take the top among the 18 Latin American and Caribbean economies. The ranking, according to the Chilean National Institute of Industrial Property, reflects the “expanding local innovation ecosystem [and] robust institutions,” but it also shows areas for improvement. These include sectors such as local industry diversification, knowledge diffusion, and ICT service exports.

Singapore remained the eighth most innovative country in the world, topping the innovation input sub-index as well as two new capital raising and financing indicators – venture capital investors and venture capital beneficiaries. “Singapore continues to perform well as an innovative economy, scoring well in the major innovation indexes for the GII,” said Rena Lee, CEO of the IP Office of Singapore. “Singapore has also outperformed the rest of the world in key economic statistics, such as the ‘Investment’ pillar, capital raising, and finance economic indicators.

For a decade, the United Kingdom has remained in fourth place and has been among the top five countries. Tim Moss, CEO of the UK Intellectual Property Office, said, “I am happy that the UK is once again scored so highly within the globally renowned Global Innovation Index.” “A robust IP environment plays a critical role in supporting economic recovery by giving creative enterprises the confidence to invest their time, energy, and resources in trying something new.