World Intellectual Property Day 2018 honoring women’s role
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has chosen the theme ‘Powering change: Women in innovation and creativity’ for the World Intellectual Property Day (IP Day) 2018, which was held on April 26.
The female scientist who created radioactive substance for cancer treatment in Cho Ray Hospital. Photo by V.GIA
This year’s IP Day celebrates the brilliance, ingenuity, curiosity and courages of the women who are driving change in our world and shaping our common future. Vietnam organized various meaningful activities to celebrate this event.
Since the first IP Day in 2000, this day had become the day when people all over the world celebrate the contribution of intellectual property rights to the development of culture and arts, technology and innovation for the sake of humans’ life.
The message of the WIPO 2018 is that innovation and creativity are manifested through various forms, from the very common to the very extra-ordinary things. For example, a billboard in Peru harvests water from the air, supplying the local community with clean drinking water; a 3D-printer at an American university regenerates damaged human tissue; money can be transferred via mobile phones and minor financial services in Kenya; or renewable energy is used to power refrigerators in rural areas of India.
As a result, IP Day is an important occasion to connect people on the earth in order to consider and evaluate contributions of intellectual property rights to the development of culture and arts as well as impetus behind technology innovation to form our world.
In Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), the HCMC Department of Science and Technology cooperated with the representative body of the National Office of Intellectual Property of Vietnam (under the Ministry of Science and Technology), HCMC University of Science, and the Women’s Initiative for Startups and Entrepreneurship (WISE) to host many practical activities, aiming to appreciate creativity, ingenuity, and bravery of women and to display how intellectual property rights can support the inventions of females in particular and people in general so that these inventions can be successfully launched onto the market.
Among the activities in the nation is the talk ‘Managing intellectual assets in innovative startups’. This talk emphasizes the growing importance of intellectual property rights in the economic development and the globalization as well as innovative startup process. Therefore, one of the major responsibilities of local authorities is to raise awareness of the public in this matter via media.
The talk presented valuable lessons of businesswomen and scientists in the startup process. It also showed how the intellectual property rights system could aid startup people in introducing their innovative ideas to the market or how these people are able to protect their artworks, creative products, new ideas, and long-timed researched technologies.
In Hanoi, the National Office of Intellectual Property of Vietnam collaborated with the Hanoi Department of Science and Technology, the Vietnam Association for Intellectual Women, the Committee of Young Employees and Urban Citizens (under the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union) to organize many national activities.
Deputy Minister of Science and Technology Pham Cong Tac stated at one of the celebration events that the property of a nation could be a city, a harbor, an airport, the gas. Yet, human beings possess not only tangible but also intangible intellectual assets sharing that until now, although the contribution of women in the nation is not as prominent as their international counterparts, changes have happened in the last few decades.
There have been more and more ideas coming from female inventors. Vietnamese women, along with the females in the world, will continue to have great influence to innovation and creativity.
The WIPO announced that it received nearly double the number of registration forms for invention of females in accordance with the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) in the period from 2007 – 2016. The rate of PCT registration forms increased from 23 percent in 2007 to 30.5 percent in 2016.
In Vietnam, there are more and more successful female scientists. 31 members of the Vietnam Association for Intellectual Women possess patents and solutions which have already been commercialized./.
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