WIPO Spotlights Filipinnovation
GENEVA, 21 June 2022 – The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) turned the spotlight this week on the Philippines’ inclusive and dynamic approach to innovation, now running full steam with the operationalisation of the Philippine Innovation Act (Republic Act 11293) of 2019 and reinforcing fundamentals for the country's post-pandemic economic resurgence.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/unlocking-filipinnovation-globalinnovationindex/
WIPO published the article "Unlocking Filipinnovation" on 20 June 2022, tracking the steps the government has taken to since the enactment of the milestone law, which puts in place a robust and inclusive innovation ecosystem that synergizes the innate creativity of the Filipino people, multi-stakeholder partnerships, innovating governance and public services, upscaling the resilience of Philippine institutions, and investing for future sustained growth that benefits all and leaves no one behind.
The article, authored by Philippine Permanent Representative to the UN and other international organizations in Geneva Ambassador Evan Garcia cites the adoption of the new law's Implementing Rules and Regulations in 2020, the establishment of the National Innovation Act and the next steps ahead.
The dynamic momentum of innovation and science and technology inputs and outputs in the Philippines have been recognized for the past three years by the WIPO-led Global Innovation Index (GII), citing the country as one of global innovation achievers which are changing the innovation landscape, alongside China, Turkey, Viet Nam, and India. The Philippines ranked 51st out of 132 economies in the GII 2021 report, after ranking 50th in 2020.
Related to this, the World Trademark Review (WTR) ranked the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHIL) 9th in the IP Office Innovation Ranking of 2021 (sharing the rank with Spain and Switzerland), a leap from 24th place in 2020. This made the Philippines the only developing country whose IP office placed in the top 10 out of 60 IP offices ranked worldwide. The WTR report cited IPOPHIL's speedy transitioning of services to online portals during the pandemic, ensuring continued service to the Filipino public, broadening its reach, and resulting in a 20 per cent year-on-year increase in filings in the first half of 2021.
Ambassador Garcia emphasized that the Philippines' vision for generating and sustaining wealth-creation through innovation is distinctively inclusive and dynamic, oriented to enabling, engaging, and benefitting all sectors of the society at all levels, and geared towards building socio-economic resilience vis-a-vis the challenges related to the environment, natural disasters, and climate change.
He also highlighted that the upgraded innovation and business landscape in the Philippines has been boosted by other laws enacted recently, such as the Innovative Start Up Act of 2019 which injects a new momentum for entrepreneurs and country's small and medium enterprises (SME) sector.
He also stressed that these decisive actions by the government to pursue the innovation agenda in the past years and even through the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, will serve to anchor the energy and resilience of the Philippine economy, which posted an 8.3 percent growth in the first quarter of 2022 and set to grow 5.7 percent year-on-year in 2022 and an average of 5.6 per cent in 2023-2024, according to the World Bank. END
For more information, visit https://www.genevapm.dfa.gov.ph, https://www.facebook.com/PHinGeneva/, or https://www.instagram.com/phingeneva/.