Inventing, innovating and patenting: IP workshop for ICT professionals

Sri Lankan ICT professionals will shortly have the rare opportunity of listening to a world-class inventor from the United States of America who would share his experiences in managing inventions.

The resource person Dr. Steven H. Voldman is an eminent scholar, practitioner and a consultant in the field of inventions and patenting who has conducted programmes in 30 universities in The United States and Asia in the past three years. The two-day programme conducted with the financial assistance from ICT Agency Sri Lanka will be held on 17 and 18 October at Hilton Residence, Colombo.

Inventions reflect the intellectual capability of a nation. Commercialised inventions bring prosperity to inventors, firms and nations. The thirst to invent and protecting the rights need to be consciously promoted within local ICT organisations. This is timely and very crucial as ICT is an industry where inventions are to be protected mostly.

To transform ourselves from followers to leaders,   it is necessary to pay attention to this area of promoting and protecting inventions. This workshop is designed to provide the skills and competencies to invent and patent inventions. It is also expected that they will play the role of catalysts in inculcating the practice of measuring performance through inventions and patents, in Sri Lankan organisations, said a spokesperson from FITIS, the organisers of the programme.  

This two-day workshop presented in an interactive classroom style utilising lectures, discussions and examples is ideal for middle and senior management (CTO and CIO) of ICT firms, R&D Managers, Project Managers and Software Engineers keen in inventing and protecting their IP rights. Some of the focus areas of this programme are how to become an inventor, How to transform yourself into an inventor, How to find invention in the common place and at your work place, How to invent out of the box, How to patent inventions and How to write, structure, template and write patent claims.

Holder of an incomparable number of 216 patents under his name, Dr. Voldman received his BS Degree in Engineering Science from University of Buffalo in 1970, Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering in 1981, Electrical Engineering Degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1982, Master of Science Degree in Engineering Physics in 1986 and Ph D from University of Vermont in 1991.

Dr. Voldman counts over two decades of industry experience serving top Fortune 500 companies including a tenor of over 10 years at IBM. He became the Corporate Top Inventor of IBM in 2000, 2001 and 2003. He is the first IEEE fellow in the field of Electrostatic Discharge protection of semiconductor devices and his recent publications include 5 text books on various aspects of ESD. He served as the ESD expert witness for Acer vs. Hewlett Packard.   

The programme is an initiative of Epic Lanka, a premier software company in Sri Lanka.

The Federation of IT Industry (FITIS) organises the programme and ICT Agency Sri Lanka (ICTA) has come forward to fund this programme as a national initiative. The participants will have to pay a nominal fee for this two-day programme. Only a limited number of participants will be accommodated on first come first served basis.