The Singapore Intellectual Property Week 2019 (“IP Week 2019”) was recently held at the Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre and jointly presented by the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (“IPOS”) and IPOS International.

Graced by the Singapore Minister for Trade and Industry, Mr Chan Chun Sing, this annual event is quickly becoming a mainstay in the international IP scene, with distinguished industry leaders, budding enterprises and legal experts coming down to engage in substantive discussions. In his opening speech, Mr Chan touched on 3 important ways the Singapore IP ecosystem can be developed. First, through enhanced research and development, specifically, “to translate research back into revenue to make it a self-sustaining cycle”.

Secondly, he opined that greater attention ought to be placed on the improvement of companies’ management expertise in transacting IP and intangible assets to drive business growth. Hence, the need to be “appreciative of the presence of many experts from around the world” to further develop these areas.

Thirdly, Mr Chan highlighted the need to solidify Singapore’s capabilities in IP enforcement, pointing out that “beyond litigation, alternative dispute resolution routes such as arbitration and mediation are also important”.

IP Week 2019’s theme “Ideas to Assets: Driving Enterprise Growth with IP” sought to gather a wide array of IP professionals from policy makers to heads of IP offices to academics, this event’s overarching question to answer was why the development of IP is of utmost importance in the midst of enterprises facing greater uncertainties in the form of ongoing trade tensions and political disruptions and what are the substantive steps that can be made towards addressing these problems.

The highlights of the IP Week 2019 were the Global Forum on Intellectual Property (“GFIP”) and the IP Marketplace. The GFIP was a multi-disciplinary forum where senior business leaders partook in spirited discussions on the latest IP trends and issues. As for the IP Marketplace, it was a highly interactive platform where exhibitors, IP experts and participants networked and connected.

At the core of the event, was an emphasis on the pertinence of collaboration amongst countries, be it in the form of partnerships such as the Sino-Singapore Guangzhou Knowledge City, as noted by the Assistant Director-General of the World Intellectual Property Organization, Mr Naresh Prasad in his welcome remarks.