International Symposium “Intellectual Property and Innovation: the best global practices”

25 September 2015 International activities 1161

On September 22nd-23rd the International Symposium “Intellectual Property and Innovation: the Best Global Practices” took place at SPbPU. This event is supported by the Committee for Industrial Policy and Innovation run by Saint-Petersburg city administration within the framework of the Program aimed at boosting competitiveness of the leading Russian universities among the leading science and education centers in the world.

Michal Svanter, the Director of the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) Office in Russia, sent his salutations to the participants of the symposium.

The event was organized by the international services and the technology park of SPbPU. Among the participants of the symposium there were Russian and foreign companies involved in programs of innovation and strategic development, universities, including those involved in the Project “5-100”, technology parks, business incubators, small innovation enterprises, patent bureaus, and centers for supporting technology and innovation.

Intellectual Property and Innovation: the best global practices

D.G. Arsenyev, Vice-Rector for International Relations, made the opening speech at the symposium. He spoke about a special significance of the event for the academic and business community. “The Polytechnic University continues to organize seminars on the best global practices within the framework of the “5-100-2020” Program. Today’s meeting is devoted to the current issues of intellectual property protection. At the weekend I took part in the conference for the rectors of the leading European universities that took place at Aalto University, Finland. Professor Dan Shechtman, an Israeli physicist and chemist, 2011 Nobel Prize laureate for “discovering quasicrystals” was present at the conference. Numerous educational institutions invite him to deliver lectures devoted to technological entrepreneurship. The scientist is sure that any scientific discovery can be commercialized and subjects teaching entrepreneurship should be introduced in secondary schools continuing to be taught at universities. I agree that science is closely connected with innovative business approaches. Today we have invited you to share your experience and make strategic decisions aimed at creating a united system for dealing with the main issues concerning intellectual property protection. I am happy to see the representatives of our partner companies, such as Bosсh, Philips and many others in this room. During the perestroika our country went through a difficult period, which certainly affected the interaction between universities and industry. However, at present the civilized and professional business acts as an important partner of science. It is a dialogue of respect and reliability. I am sure that our mutual efforts are a key to successful tomorrow”, said Dmitry Germanovich.

M.E. Rayak, the Director of the Technopark “Polytechnic”, spoke about the opportunities of the technology park and how it supports young researchers in terms of startup promotion. “Everyone needs to be educated in the sphere of intellectual property”, explained M.E. Rayak.

The program of the symposium reflected the wishes of the participants, as well as the current challenges related to law enforcement of intellectual property rights, especially at universities. Three professional sections were set up: “Legal Protection and Commercialization of Intellectual Property”, “Information and Patent Databases”, “Commercialization of Intellectual Property: Experience and Practices”. A roundtable discussion and a workshop were one of the highlights at the symposium.

The meeting of the professional section “Legal Protection and Commercialization of Intellectual Property” was started by N.V. Polyakova, Director of the Legal Department of the Russian Venture Company (Moscow). Her report was called “The Peculiarities of the Russian Intellectual Property Market”. N.V. Polyakova’s first higher education is connected with chemistry and teaching. She has a PhD degree in chemistry and she knows well the main problems of the science. Dramatic changes that took place in Russian in the 1990s explain the necessity to receive a second higher education: it was a time when research was hardly encouraged by government policy. Natalia Vladimirovna’s experience in the sphere of law helped her to acquire a new vision. She believes that the results of research should be preserved as know-how. Speaking about the connection between science and business, it is always difficult to predict the final result of an experiment. “We can remember the experiments of medieval chemists aimed at producing gold. Searching for something inevitably led to other important discoveries. We must be grateful to them for a significant development of knowledge concerning metallurgy and technology. Patient research, scrupulous observation and comparison helped to perfect the processes of glass and ceramic production, as well as iron, copper, silver, mercury, lead and zinc extraction from ores. This is what is meant by scientific research. Is it possible to order certain results? Of course not. A lot depends on pure luck”, claimed N.V. Polyakova.

Ildar Shaikhutdinov, CEO of the Financial Business Development Institute (Moscow) spoke about the opportunities and risks of commercializing intellectual property items within the framework of import replacement in Russia. This is especially important, given the complicated political situation affecting the economic development of our country. Ildar Shaikhutdinov is an experienced strategist and doer. In the “Ruscomposit” group of companies he developed and put into practice the concept of increasing business value due to capitalization of intellectual property and non-material assets. The implementation if this strategy ensured a 26,000-time growth in non-current assets (from 8,000 rubles to 206 mln rubles, a 5-time increase in the own capital, and a 25% drop in borrowed capital).

Intellectual Property and Innovation: the best global practices

A lot of participants attended the roundtable discussion “Policy in the sphere of intellectual property at higher education institutions. Russian and foreign experience of centers providing services concerning commercialization of intellectual property”. The meeting lasted for more than three hours. Everyone was eager to share their opinion and expertise. Intellectual property is the economic base of a higher education institution. The Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation implements a certain policy aimed at turning Russian universities into centers for research and development, establishing small innovation enterprises. This presupposes a certain national policy in the field of intellectual property.

“Every higher education institution makes its own decisions concerning the issues of intellectual property protection. The concept describing the development of an educational institution and its long-term goals are the factors influencing these procedures immensely. Only a systemic approach to commercializing intellectual property can enable building a database of intellectual property items that are more or less ready for commercialization, analyzing them and initiating their industrial application”, said Ismail Kadiyev, PhD in Economics, Director of the Center for Supporting Technology and Innovation, Deputy Director of the Department of Intellectual Property at SPbPU.

At the end of the first day of the symposium O.I. Abramenko, Head of IT Department of the “Center of Intellectual Property “Skolkovo (Moscow)” LLC, conducted a workshop “Preparing Patent Applications in IT Sphere”. The speaker made use of Russian and foreign expertise. He spoke about protecting IT-decisions in Russia, such as algorhythms, interface, computer programs, and the amount of protection for each item. Oleg Abramenko explained what exactly should be taken into account when introducing IT-products into foreign markets and applying for foreign patents, and he also described the possible pitfalls when using open source components. “Any invention is to solve a technical problem and, as a consequence, it should lead to a technical result. Business methods and mathematical models are not inventions”, said O.I. Abramenko.

The professional section “Commercialization of Intellectual Property” was opened on September 23rd, and it was attended by the representatives of academic circles, as well as speakers of the leading global companies. Tony Pleschinger, Director of Bosch Russian Research and Technology Center, spoke about the company strategy concerning intellectual property. He was impressed by the symposium and spoke highly of its prospects and practical value for the participants. According to him, certain research experiments fail due to “crudity” of the idea behind it that does not correspond to the selected technical parameters. “It is very important to be able to predict the result”, said Tony Pleschinger. As a result of this event, he established some new business contacts and found new colleagues and partners.

Igor Rozhdestvensky, CEO of “Martal SPb” LLC presented a report on “Why Intellectual Property is Bought, Sold and Protected”. According to him, a system of communication is a key point of successful cooperation of science and industry. In many European countries renowned professors work as consultants for many industries, and members of business community actively cooperate with universities. This helps to achieve the goals set. “Technological decisions and developments are really necessary for medium-sized businesses”, believes I. Rozhdestvensky.

Strategies and techniques for patenting and licensing developments on the global market were also discussed at the symposium. The special guests, Russian and foreign leading experts, spoke about the relevance of the event and its significance for specialists. They discussed the best practices in the sphere of audit and intellectual property, marketing, innovation, commercialization of developments and intellectual property, the tendencies and prospects of launching Russian businesses into the global technology market, as well as the presence of foreign companies on the Russian market. Each participant received a certificate.

Intellectual Property and Innovation: the best global practices

The semi-final of the program “UMNIK” (“An Intellectual”) took place during the symposium.

Thus, the International Symposium “Intellectual Property and Innovation: the Best Global Practices” became an opportunity for all representatives of the complicated innovation process to meet at the same time, namely, lawyers and patent specialists, developers of technologies and new decisions, i.e. universities, consumers of innovation, i.e. companies, and software tools (databases). The participants were in favor of holding this event on a regular basis.

We hope that the symposium “Intellectual Property and Innovation” will continue its work in 2016. We thank everyone for participation and support of the idea to create a community of people sharing the same views in relation to the sphere of protecting intellectual property at universities.

For your reference:

Participants of the International Symposium “Intellectual Property and Innovation” in 2015 are as follows: higher education institutions and research centers – 41 (22 from Saint-Petersburg, 14 from other parts of Russia, 3 from abroad); 5 universities of 5-100 Project (National Research University “Higher School of Economics”, Samara State Aerospace University, National Research Tomsk State University, Kazan Federal University, SPbPU); leading global companies Bosch, Philips, Ernst&Young, Thomson Reuters, Euromonitor International, etc.) and large Russian corporations (JSC “Power Machines”, JSC “Admiralteiskie Verfi”, PLC “Lengidroproyect”, ZAO “MOBIKION”); about 30 patent bureaus, legal companies and information analysis centers. Total number: more than 170 participants.

Brought to you by the International Relations Office

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