Enrico
Photo credit: slworking2
IP Faber had the opportunity to be present at the IPBC 2008 in Amsterdam.
It has been very interesting and somehow unexpected gathering.
The focus of the conference was not really on the main role of the CIPO (Chief Intellectual Property Officer) but on its powers and definition.
After all, the word “CIPO” has been invented only in 2004 and it is a very new professional entity!
So 5 people were invited to talk about their experience as CIPO. The first one has been Ruud Peters of Philips, a smallish company that sometimes takes newspapers headlines for some not very important breakthrough inventions…
Ruud Peters says that Philips IP dept. is made up of 17 offices around the globe and some 500 people. The IP dept. was started in 1977. Ruud says that it is important to understand that if you work in IP for large companies you need to collaborate with other companies (I do believe the same applies to SMEs even more). Philips started to work in China in 2000 and then in India, now 40 people are already working in those countries. Peters says Philips is a global corporation also from this (IP centric) point of view and this sounds new to us: nobody has tried to talk about globalization from the IP department point of view.
In fact we think that this is a key point: in the knowledge era you cannot miss IP as one of the main drivers for development and innovation, so it would be rather interesting putting together a sort of “IP Globalization index“.
Peters sees the major challenge is expanding and enabling open innovation on one part and on the other part executing and doing things together with other companies: he’s right as knowledge monopoly managed through IP regulation could be opposite to open innovation! And this will probably be one of the main task to accomplish in the next few decades.
(IP Faber thinks open innovation is a key factor in today business, contact us if you need further advice)
