Eleven students under the BS Pharmaceutical Science / BS Pharmacy programs of the University of South Australia (UniSA) who were part of the Study Abroad Program of the Office of International Relations and Programs attended the seminar-workshop on Intellectual Property (IP) 101 titled “Fundamentals of Intellectual Property and Patent Search.”
UST Innovation and Technology Support Office (ITSO) Manager Assoc. Prof. Michael Jorge N. Peralta conducted the seminar-workshop as part of their exposure to pharmacy practice in the Philippines, on February 12, 2020 at the Faculty of Pharmacy, Main Building.
The students were hosted by the UST Faculty of Pharmacy from January 29 to February 14, 2020 as part of the mobility program that the UST Faculty of Pharmacy has with UniSA. They were accompanied by Pharmaceutical Science Program Director Matt Sykes, Ph.D., who acted as the group’s Faculty Leader.
The participants to the ITSO Search Workshop were: Ashlyn Austin, Millicent Bennett, Kylie Fong, Isabel Lean, Natasha Williams, Jenny Nguyen, Lija Pfeiler, Georgia Braddon, Luis Wiltshire, Eve Allen, and Kate Berry. The students were exposed to the pharmacy practice in the Philippines such as pharmaceutical industry, lab tours, clinical research, medicinal plants and community preparations.
At the ITSO search workshop, Peralta discussed the different Intellectual Property rights and how they are applied to the field of Pharmacy. He also oriented them on the different free search engines in conducting patent search to determine the novelty and inventive step of their projects. He stressed the point that this will assist them in avoiding the so-called ‘re-inventing the wheel’ and thus their projects might just fall within patentable subject matter. As for the workshop aspect of the seminar, Peralta gave them a hands-on experience on how to navigate the free patent databases and read patent documents.
As the University’s Executive Assistant for Intellectual Property and Research, Peralta works hard toward improving the IP awareness of the various sectors of the University, such as faculty members, students, and researchers in matters of IP, patent searching and patent drafting, by conducting seminar-workshops for them, and for other audiences such as University guests. According to Peralta, who has been recognized and awarded by public and private organizations for his indefatigable efforts at promoting IP awareness by conducting such seminar-workshops, “This would eventually lead to more technologies that would be commercialized and transferred to industry partners for public use and at the same time may earn royalties to the inventors as their incentives to create more.”
