The UST Innovation and Technology Support Office (ITSO) headed by Assoc. Prof. Michael Jorge N. Peralta, Ll.M, participated in the President Summit organized by Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPhl) held on August 19, 2019 at the Dusit Thani Hotel, Makati City. Representing the UST Rector Very Rev. Fr. Herminio V. Dagohoy, O.P., was the Vice Rector for Research and Innovation Prof. Maribel G. Nonato, Ph.D.
The activity sought to inform the top officials of the universities on the value of IP to the economy of the Philippines. Concepts of the 4th Industrial Revolution were discussed, as well as the Global Innovation Index of the Philippines. The impact that the ITSOs play in improving our ranking, where the Philippines jumped rank from 78th to 54th partly due to the increased number of patent filings by the ITSOs. Also discussed was the re-engineering of the ITSOs in order to be more aggressive in their mandates. The proposal of IPOPhl is to measure the performance of ITSO based on certain metrics that are still under discussion.
One of the goals of the ITSO initiative is to protect IPs that are generated in universities and follow them through commercialization and technology transfer. There are total of 94 ITSO to date, of which UST is one the first batches to have been publicly launched in 2012.
