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Himself ranked as a Minister, DG Dr. Gurry was accompanied by his key WIPO officials; Ambi Sundaram (WIPO Assistant Director General of Admin & Management in Geneva), Ranjana Abeysekera (Director, Regional Bureau for Asia and Pacific in Geneva) and Armelle Le Theix (WIPO Geneva’s Regional Bureau of Asia and Pacific’s officer in charge of Sri Lanka Desk). Also arriving with DG Gurry was Ambassador Ravinatha Aryasinha, Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva.
“This is my first time in Sri Lanka and my mission to Colombo is for a ten-point plan for Sri Lanka which I will work out in depth with the officials of your Intellectual Property Office in Colombo during my stay here,” said Dr. Gurry.
He added: “We think this as a very important area because the patent system is the most comprehensive memory of human technologies and innovation. Our WIPO database has 30 million disclosures and documents of this in it. It includes collections from most major economies and countries- China, US, Europe, Japan.
“Science and technology are merging and many universities are interested in the patent systems access for which they did not have previously. The Technology Innovation Support Centres (TISC) project will network all these Universities with Sri Lankan entrants easily.
“For example in Russia, about 250 universities are on this network, as well as Philippines universities. TISC will also give access to our database which in turn can help in starting public-private partnerships with publishers in such avenues as access to more than 4000 scientific and technical journals available from the UN Environment Program, ‘Search for Life’ initiative etc which are extraordinarily useful for universities and research agencies here. There is also access to tech databases, all of which will benefit Sri Lanka tech greatly.”
The ten envisaged points mapped out by Minister Bathiudeen’s Intellectual Property Office with WIPO are the establishment of a Technology and Innovation Support Centre (TISC), integration of IP into national innovation policy formulation, facilitation of accession to Madrid, facilitation of accession to Lisbon, establishment of a Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL), strengthening of Collective Management Organisations (CMOs), building respect for IP, capacity building in patent drafting, Sri Lanka’s participation in patent drafting, Sri Lanka’s participation in the WIPO Green Program and product branding in Sri Lanka. Detailed strategies are to be finalised on these 10 identified themes.
Stressing on the tenth point, Lanka Product Branding, Dr. Gurry said: “We have this ten-point plan, proposals which includes the Madrid Agreement which helps Sri Lanka to easily secure international trademark rights. Last year India, Philippine, NZ, Columbia joined it.
“By 2015 ASEAN will join it. It has some financial advantages for Sri Lanka also. Its financial system will make a regular disbursement to member countries according to a formula. Therefore Sri Lanka will stand to receive at a minimum of $ 110,000 on a regular basis by acceding to it. The actual receipts could be higher.”
Minister Bathiudeen, addressing Dr. Gurry, said: “The National Intellectual Property Office has informed me that we are now readying for an MoU with WIPO to commence regional IP centres some of which will be placed under the Ministry of Technology and Research and some are under Universities, including Jaffna University.
“We are also addressing training needs on patents and IP. NIPO under my Ministry has been continuously benefitting from WIPO and I thank you for such as well as new envisaged support in future. Just as WIPO, we too are of the strong belief that innovation and new tech can drive our new growth. In fact, we have already begun to move in this direction. The recent Nano Technology Park initiative of President Mahinda Rajapaksa is the timeliest initiative in Sri Lanka in this regard.”
Responding to Minister Bathiudeen, Dr. Gurry said: “Yes, nano-technology is future oriented tech. Remember that it is an extremely skilled area, and if you get it right, investors will come.”
