Developing countries told to protect IPR

MANILA, Philippines - Developing countries must catch up with their richer counterparts in terms of protecting and promoting the creation of intellectual property, such as research findings, industrial designs, and crop species, or else risk losing out billions of dollars in revenue to the more IP-savy nations, experts said in a forum yesterday. To do so, the protection of said goods must be taught not just to lawyers, but to the rest of the academe, government officials and private firms. "Ninety-seven percent of patents registered now are owned by developed countries...IP accounts for 80% of corporate wealth in the United States," World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Worldwide Academy dean Mpazi Sinjela said in a forum. Trade secrets, patents for technology, and other IP goods make up $30 billion-$70 billion of the assets of top firms such as CocaCola, Microsoft, and Nokia, Mr. Sinjela said. Taiwan is said to produce five patents a day according to Science and Technology department Undersecretary Fortunato dela Peña. The Philippines, in contrast, has granted only 35 patents since 1947. "Why is the Philippines not joining the gold rush?" Mr. Sinjela asked. "In developing countries...inventions are not protected, and [those in the developed countries] begin to steal the invention and the creator can’t make any money," he said. Adrian S. Cristobal, Jr., director-general of the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines, gave the example of the US-patented drug erythromycin which is said to make billions of dollars in sales. "The active ingredient [of that drug] is from the soil in an area in Iloilo," Mr. Cristobal said. The chemical from the Philippine sea snail, he added, is used in powerful painkillers abroad. "We need to be less vulnerable," he said. Aside from natural resources, IP assets can be sourced from the country’s semiconductor, information and communication technology, furniture, garments, animation and creative industries, Mr. Cristobal said. Creative goods such as music, literature and films make up 5% of the country’s total gross domestic product, he noted. Output from universities and research development institutes need to be protected as well. "The innovations from our universities, all these years, end up in large corporations abroad. This is the real brain drain," Mr. Cristobal said. "Our target in our strategic plan is to increase applications of patents by 100% from 2007 to 2010. Five percent of this number will have to be in the stage of commercialization," he said, noting that his agency has already ordered state-owned universities to draft IP policies by the end of the year. "The paradigm of universities used to be [to] publish [research]. Seldom does it move to the stage of prototyping. After publication, those with the capital and the laboratories pick it up. There are lost opportunities," Mr. Cristobal said. Patenting academic output will also provide additional income to cash-strapped public universities and research institutes, he added. — Jessica Anne D. Hermosa, BusinessWorld