Speech by Ms Liew Woon Yin, at the Opening Ceremony of the 2005 Europe Asia Patent Information Conference Held at Suntec City Convention Centre
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Good morning,
Senior Minister of State, Associate Professor Ho Peng Kee,
Professor Alain Pompidou, President, European Patent Office,
Mr Ian Harvey, Chairman of The Intellectual Property Institute Board; Chairman of the UK government’s Intellectual Property Advisory Committee,
Distinguished colleagues from national IP offices,
Ladies & gentlemen.
- Welcome once again to the Europe Asia Patent Information Conference (EAPIC) 2005!
- I see in the audience some familiar faces, and many new ones too at this 3rd EAPIC hosted in Singapore. To us, this signals two things – firstly, that EAPIC is certainly a platform that participants see worth in repeat attendance, and secondly that EAPIC reaches out every year to even more parties interested in IP!
- This year we see greater representation from national offices in Europe, the US, WIPO, as well as from our counterparts in the region sharing their latest developments in information services and IP databases.
- EAPIC was established to catalyse industry adoption and application of IP information in IP management strategies. Although I foresee it having to continue this catalytic role for many years to come, with the increasing sophistication of users demanding more value-added services, national IP offices too have to keep apace with developments.
- EAPIC thus also provides an effective interface for national IP offices to reach out to users and stakeholders; to get a better feel of the ground of user needs; to determine gaps in IP application and propose discussions on how these gaps may be addressed.
- National IP offices and service providers could take this as an opportunity to explore how IP information and intelligence services may be adapted to ensure greater relevancy to this group of users.
- IPOS, from a national IP office perspective has grappled with the issue of making IP relevant to our over 100,000 local small & medium enterprises.
- It was with this end in mind that in 2000, IPOS launched SurfIP – providing a free portal for users to delve into IP information. It has been 5 years since SurfIP was launched, and while an increasing number of databases and tools were provided via the portal, with increased demand for value-added IP services, we see the need for SurfIP to adapt to cater to this need. Plans are already underway to ensure SurfIP’s continued relevance with the development of SurfIP 2 which will include new and exciting value added services for users. Surf IP 2 is scheduled for launch in 2006.
- In addition, IPOS’ current suite of e-services including ePatents and eTrademarks, will be rounded off as of today with the launch of eDesigns – both for efiling as well as for esearch.
- With the launch of eDesigns, IPOS’ operations will improve in terms of efficiency by the:
i) Increase in service level as eDesigns is available 24 hours
ii) Faster response time to the public, and
iii) Provision of more than one channel of filing applications.
- Applicants will also benefit by:
i) Receiving real time confirmation on the submission of their design;
ii) Receiving online verification to assure error-free filing;
iii) The speeding up of entry into the registration process; and
iv) Being able to print the completed application.
- Indeed over the past years, we have seen a greater proportion of online usage. Out of a total of 8,266 patent applications filed in Financial Year 2004, about 75% of them were filed online. Out of a total of 14088 national applications for registration of trade marks, 10,914 (or 77.5%) applications were filed online.
- Other IP information and eservices developments have sprung up as well. One example is the development of IP Juris – a collection of intellectual property laws from Asian jurisdictions. It is a joint project of the Centre of Asia Pacific Technology Law & Policy at the Nanyang Business School and the IP Academy. IP Juris will be launched officially soon and we look forward to exciting developments from the project.
- It is hoped that through platforms such as EAPIC, there would arise greater knowledge of such IP developments, both from national IP offices as well as commercial service providers.
- We hope for EAPIC to continue to serve as an effective interface between national IP offices, industry and IP professionals as it is only through continued close association and regular updates, that common interests could dovetail, resulting in collaborations to ensure efficient use of resources for mutual benefit.
- I would like to end by thanking Professor Pompidou and the EPO for their continued support of EAPIC and other initiatives in this region. Singapore’s thanks also to our counterparts from the national IP offices for their presence here.
- To our speakers and participants, I hope for your continued interest in joining us in this journey towards generating greater value-add from IP.
Thank you. |
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