Phnom Penh, March 21, 2019 —
The Ministry of Industry and Handicraft (MIH), in cooperation with the European Patent Office (EPO) has organised a training workshop to teach Cambodian professors on how to use the IP teaching kit.
The training, held at Phnom Penh Hotel Tuesday, presented an overview of the IP teaching kit content and its various modules. Lecturers, lawyers, and government officials alike would be beneficial from this training such as having their skills and knowledge about IP management strengthened so that they could further transfer to their students and other stakeholders.
The knowledge will also help the trainees to understand the differences between the technological innovations that were protected by the patent and those that were not; hence, it will enable those innovators to be more willing to produce new technology and sought patent protection for it before distributing it into the markets, said MIH Secretary of State H.E. Sat Samy.
The training will more benefits to Cambodia on patent management tasks in addition to its long-term vision to become one of the biggest patent management experts in the word, he said.
According to H.E. Sat Samy, Cambodia is one of the four validation states of EPO, besides the Republic of Moldova, Morocco and Tunisia, while Angola, Brunei Darussalam, Georgia, Lao PDR are under pending agreeements. MIH has cooperated with EPO to recognise the patent validations issued by EPO in Cambodia.
Cambodia, he added, lacks expertise in patent applications and examinations. That is why assistantship from EPO is so significant. EPO will help with the reception of patent applications, examining them and issuing patent validations before sending the information back to Cambodia. Cambodia then will issues patent certificates for patent protection in the country without any further examinations. This will allow Cambodia to get more patent applications and protections and increase more incomes from investment in new technology.
H.E. Sat Samy continued that to participate in the framework of economic globalisation and in ASEAN Economic Community at present, the Royal Government of Cambodia had done their best to develop all domains, including IP which is a crucial part to boost business operations through the encouragement of creative ideas, new industrial production, and foster the market competition nationally, regionally, and globally.
By So Sophavy, AKP