MANILA: The Intellectual Property of the Philippines (IPOPHL) said on Wednesday IP filings through its Innovations and Technology Support Offices (ITSOs) hit an all-time high last year as more universities and colleges joined the Innovation and Technology Support Program.
In a statement, the IPOPHL said aggregate IP filings of Innovation and Technology Support Offices which include higher education institutions, state universities and colleges and other institutions part of the innovation program reached 1,535 in 2023 from 1,040 in 2022.
Innovation-related IPs, namely patents, utility models (UM) and industrial designs (ID) accounted for about 90 percent of all filings received in all 87 ITSOs last year, while the rest were trademarks.
Patents filed last year reached 427, higher by 77 percent than the 241 in 2022.
UM rose 28 percent to 736 from 574 while ID jumped by 57 percent to 200 from 127.
Trademarks also grew by 76 percent to 172 from 98 while copyright deposits saw a 119.8 percent growth to 521 fr
om 237.
IPOPHL Director General Rowel S. Barba attributed the growth to the increase in ITSO members from 77 in 2022 to 87 as of present. This is aside from the agency’s capacity-building.
‘ITSO member-institutions serve as frontliners to our IP stakeholders in universities and colleges, committed to accelerating the use of the IP system in their communities. The record-high filings are proof of the outcomes of the ITSO 2.0 Program in helping build our innovation capabilities to power our nation’s socioeconomic growth and development,’ Barba said.
The ITSO is IPOPHL’s flagship program to capacitate members to conduct patent information search, patent drafting, IP application, IP commercialization and IP awareness activities.
In 2019, the program was redesigned to create the ITSO 2.0, which sets varying cluster deliverables to provide members with more tailored support based on their levels of innovation and IP capacities.
‘More importantly, under the ITSO 2.0 Program, we see our ITSO partners continuing
to push their technologies to break new ground. IP commercialization continued to move at full throttle last year as more ITSOs were driven to make an impact in society through their IPs,’ Barba said.
Data showed that 39 ITSOs engaged in activities toward commercialization, up by 50 percent from 26 ITSOs in 2022.
This led to 74 reported commercialization activities last year, higher by 51 oercent from the previous year.
Source: Philippines News Agency