Singapore has become a major hub for IP-driven companies due to the suitable environment that it provides for the companies. Companies always look for a destination that has multiple benefits and has strong business environment. Singapore always fits in this domain and major industries and business seeks to establish their foot in Singapore capturing the market in the Asia-Pacific. Each business knows the importance of IP and the value that IP holds as an asset to the company. With the recovering economy, it is important to strategize IP so that the businesses can keep up the pace. Pandemic has seen a lot of countries going fully online with the pace of the economy getting slower. Nevertheless, the post-pandemic recovery has been in its place with major economies and businesses recovering slowly.

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IP Week @ SG 2021

Singapore organized its latest IP Week @ SG 2021 with the prime focus on discussing potential intellectual property strategies for the main purpose of driving economic recovery. This event is an annual signature IP conference held on August 24-25 which ran as a hybrid event with both in-person and virtual attendees. The first day saw the participation of both in-person and virtual attendees and the second day with a fully virtual format. The theme of this event was “Ideas to Assets: Emerging Stronger with IP,” which saw the huge participation of various business leaders, experts, and heads of IP offices. Prominent offices which participated were China, Japan, United States, and the UK. They discussed prominent issues ranging from problems that enterprises are facing to key intangible assets. Since the post-pandemic recovery was the main thrust of the event, national economic growth strategies and IP were the center point of discussion, putting more emphasis on how IP can accelerate businesses.

“The pandemic has created challenges and opportunities for businesses. Those that have successfully adapted and shifted to new business models and created solutions to fight the pandemic have seen their businesses grow. IP Week @ SG 2021 comes at a time when the world economy is still finding its footing and enterprises are looking to see how they can be ready for the future recovery,” said Rena Lee, Chief Executive of the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore. IP licensing and commercialization, protecting IP and managing brands in the digital space, the role of IA in business valuation and financing, as well as the impact of artificial intelligence developments on global IP regimes were some of the hotly discussed topics at the conference.

“For emerging economies, IP's role in recovery must be highlighted and optimized as we create new value for a new normal. This crisis can be a period for building a golden age for knowledge economies where even MSMEs contribute and benefit. But we must work more, and unite more, to achieve our envisioned robust, responsive, and inclusive IP system," said Rowel S. Barba, Director General of the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines and Chair of the ASEAN Working Group on Intellectual Property Cooperation.

Singapore’s IP Strategy: SIPS 2030

In a recent article, we have discussed at length, the unveiling of IP Strategy 2030 aiming to strengthen Singapore’s economic growth with a strong blueprint of innovation and IP for the next 10 years. With the incoming of SIPS, it will boost the cross-border dispute resolution activities to become a more dynamic hub where Singapore continuously strengthens its global linkage. For ensuring that there is an effective pool of technical experts, initiatives such as collaboration and training providers are also underway. Technological and market changes in the digital economy significantly affect how data is created, distributed, and consumed. The “big data revolution” has seen a huge growth in the generation and collection of digital data, and driven the creation of large datasets and databases which are the “stock feed” on which new technologies such as machine learning relies on. To support an economy powered by digital innovation, Singapore is introducing an exception for computational data analysis in the upcoming Copyright Bill. This new exception will allow the use of copyrighted works for purposes such as text and data mining, data analytics, and machine learning. The Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) will continue to study how big data is important for Singapore and whether further changes to Singapore’s IA/IP laws are necessary to help our innovators and enterprises capture economic opportunities offered by the digital economy. The aim is to find a balance between the interests of creators (providing incentives to encourage further innovation in big data) and ensuring access by third parties to maximize the benefits of the original works.

Author: Saransh Chaturvedi an associate at Global Patent Filing,  in case of any queries please contact/write back us at support@globalpatentfiling.com.