DA, PhilRice organize NE monitoring center

SCIENCE CITY OF Muñoz Nueva Ecija-The Department of Agriculture (DA) and the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) are now set to battle intellectual piracy and in the process protect the intellectual property rights (IPR) of Filipino researchers and scientists.

To ensure that Filipino scientists are protected from intellectual theft, the DA and PhilRice inaugurated last week a state-of-the-art Biotech-Intellectual Property Rights Training Center (BIPRTC) at the PhilRice compound here.

The launching of BIPRTC was part of the National Biotech Week celebration. Thirty computers have been set up at BIPRTC to surf the Web and investigate whether other persons and institutions are stealing or illegally appropriating the original researches and inventions of Filipino scientists.

Valued at more than P2 million, the BIPRTC was organized jointly by the DA Biotech Program Implementation Unit (BPIU) and the PhilRice Intellectual Property Management Office (IPMO).

Thirty professionals undertaking biotech research and development (R&D) attended a three-day seminar-workshop on IPR and biotechnology after the inauguration.

Lawyer Ronilo Beronio, PhilRice IPMO deputy executive director, said the trainees were taught the latest trends in patent classification and given lessons on the search for existing patents and the means on how to improve on them.

Beronio stressed the BIPRTC will also serve the biotech-UPR related training needs of R&D institutions, state colleges and universities and other researchers in the agriculture and fisheries sectors.

Officials from different agencies under the DA, Department of Health (DoH) and the Intellectual Property Office (IPO), including director Dr. Alice Ilaga of DA-BPIU and Ireneo Galicia deputy director general of IPO, attended the inauguration.

PhilRice director Dr. Leocadio Sebastian said that he hopes the facility would "enhance our capability on IPR management with the aid of new information technology tools."

'Scientists are no longer contended with publishing their work and being recognized with awards. They now want their share of the financial benefit. On the other hand, the private sector has been sufficiently encouraged to invest huge amounts of money in biotechnology research because of the prospects of big profits," Sebastian explained.

He said strong gains in biotechnology have been noted in developed countries since IPRs are well established there and are providing the right environment for rapid advances in original biotechnology research.

Thus, these countries have achieved better results in scientific research to fuel their own "Gene Revolution."

Sebastian said the country is still trying its best to establish the right environment for investment in R&D in contrast to scientists and institutions in developed countries that have been trained to handle R&D and make handle both regulatory and IPR issues related to biotechnology.

'We have been doing R&D for the past 100 years and yet we know very little about IP and have applied IP on very few of our output," he stressed.

Sebastian said that while the country's prestigious R&D institutions have generated so many innovations and the technologies over the years, they do not hold so many patents.