Singapore’s IPOS Ranks No. 2 Among Worldwide Innovative IP Offices
In the annual ranking of the world’s most innovative IP offices, the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (Ipos) ranks number two.
Coming in second behind the European Union, Ipos was placed alongside Spain and Chile in its OP Office Innovative Ranking for 2019 by the World Trademark Review (WTR). EU continued to retain its pole position.
WTR described Ipos as an “innovation agency” with a “strong focus on providing education and support in business development”. Incidentally, Ipos was also a runner up in the WTR’s inaugural 2017 study.
WTR’s study was conducted for 50 countries and looked into three categories primarily. These categories were value-added propositions, online capabilities and public outreach efforts. Opinions were sought from around 100 IP practitioners in these matters.
Government Agency was Pleased to Be Recognised for Its Efforts
Ipos’s Chief Executive stated that the government agency was pleased to be recognised for its efforts. IPOS is aimed at helping enterprises use UP for business growth, and for the training Singaporeans in IP and innovation-related skills.
It is clear that digitalisation, technology and innovation are now key global economic drivers, and Ipos recognises this. An enterprises value will increase exponentially through intangible assets such as IP, know-how and data for example. In 2018, the value of intangible assets like IP for the first time in history overtook the value of tangible assets.
Ipos is going to leverage Singapore as a top-class IP regime to help the country nurture even more intangible asset-rich enterprises. This will help Singapore develop as a county where innovative enterprises can scale upwards and better access to Asian growth markets.
Over the past 12 months, Ipos’s initiatives have included launching a fast-track scheme in April last year to help support fintech business from all over the world and bring their IP to the markets much faster through an accelerated patent-to-grant process.
As of September 2018, the IP Value-Lab, which is Ipos’s enterprise engagement arm, successful signed an agreement to establish an International IP innovation service centre. This centre will be based in the Sino-Singapore Guangzhou Knowledge City.
