Mrs Alice Tan, Superintendent, School Branch East, Ministry of Education
Mrs Foo Sook Fong, Principal, St. Hilda’s Primary School
Teachers and Students,
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen
1. I am delighted to be here at St Hilda’s Primary School for the official launch of the iperckidz website and the IP CD-ROM.
2. Those young (and young at heart), and I mean all of you here today, have tremendous capacity to create and innovate. Your vision and imagination is unbounded. As Carl Sagan once said “Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. Without it we go nowhere.”
3. In recognition of this, the Ministry of Education, has implemented numerous innovation and creative development, to encourage our young to try out new things, to expand their horizons, and test the limits.
4. Everyone here has the capacity to be a young inventor too. You need not be a genius to have new ideas, you only need to act to develop those ideas. As Thomas Edison once said “The value of an idea lies in the using of it.”
5. I’m sure many of you have heard of Thomas Edison – the famous inventor. But inventors come in all forms. As a matter of fact, I have been told that we have some budding inventors in our midst today. Your school mates Kevin Seet and Leroy Kiang have, with the help of their mentors, already made their first invention under the Innovation Programme organised by Ministry of Education. As part of this Innovation Programme, they have developed a special type of chair, which will beep every time a student rocks on their chairs instead of being seated properly. I think that’s a great invention! Of course, if your teachers decide to use their invention in schools, this means that all you students must sit properly on your chairs, and pay attention to your teachers from now on!
6. That is what Intellectual Property Rights can help protect. Your right to your ideas and creations. Intellectual property rights, such as patents and registered designs can help stop other people from copying the chair developed by your schoolmates.
7. From this example, it’s very clear that innovation and IP are very closely linked. In fact, IP rights are needed in order for inventors to best use their inventions. But don’t go away thinking that IP is just meant for inventors and scientists. Your creations, be it a drawing, a song, a story or a piece of craft, can be protected by some form of IP right. Look around you, IP rights can protect the everyday things, from the light bulb to the ice-cream cones that you eat, your songs and music, and even the special names or trade marks of the things we buy.
8. Students such as Kevin and Leroy, and other creative students like them, are the future creators, owners and users of such intellectual property. Hence, we want to you to have an understanding of the importance of protecting intellectual property and encourage you to be curious about IP. We hope to open your eyes to the many forms of IP in the world around us So “Be curious, Investigate IP”.
9. What can we do to help you? Today, with the launch of the IP CD-ROM and the iperckidz website, IPOS will bring the wonders of intellectual property and the tools to explore it.
IP CD-ROM
10. The first of these tools is the IP CD-ROM entitled “A Thief, A Liar & The Ignoramuses”. It will introduce a new character, Detective IP, who you will be meeting later. Detective IP will act as the your guide through 4 different IP-related games, where you will be asked to help Detective IP investigate and solve IP cases. In the process, you can pick up the basics of the four major forms of IP, copyright, design, trade mark and patent.
11. Apart from the games, the CD-ROM also packs in fun IP facts in the form of comics commissioned and contributed by the World Intellectual Property Organisation. To be Junior Detectives you have to complete a quiz, at the end of the game. We hope this game will make you think more about what IP means.
iperckidz Website
12. Following this fun interactive introduction to IP in the CD-ROM, you can then visit the iperckidz website for more information on IP. The iperckidz website is the first interactive IP web resource for students in Singapore. It has a whole collection of IP information, as well as an online platform for you to ask Detective IP your questions. Through this iperckidz website, we hope to build a community of IP champions – a legion of Junior Detective IPs -- amongst students and teachers. We want to see your ideas and creations take flight!
13. In closing, I would like to thank our partners, the Ministry of Education, as well as the principal and staff of St. Hilda’s Primary School, for their whole-hearted support and assistance in IPOS’ programmes.
14 And to the students, I wish all of you a happy and exciting journey into the world of intellectual property. As another famous creator, George Bernard Shaw, a playwright once said ” You see things; and you say, "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?" Thank you.