Roundtable Discussion for IP Stakeholders , Prof. Yasser Gadallah, delivered a presentation on IP protection with emphasizes on patents and gave some details on
Participants: 28 including staff, assistant staff and engineers.
The main points discussed in the event:
Prof. Yasser Gadallah, delivered a presentation on IP protection with emphasizes on patents and gave some details on the IP- Med project funded by Tempus. Also, we talked about Mater program in Intellectual Property and Innovation Management which is launched in 2015 as a unique program in Helwan University and all the Egyptian universities. The event discussed the main concepts of Intellectual Property, history of IP in Egypt and worldwide and more focus on patents.
It was a fruitful and very interactive workshop. There are many questions has been raised regarding the ambiguity of inventive step’s concept as one of the main important conditions to obtain patent. Moreover, the participants raised a very important question concerning the range of protection whether it is a regional or international especially after TRIPs agreement enter into force in 2005.
The workshop tackles the importance of teaching IP in the universities and raising the awareness on IP issues among the specialists in different fields, such as engineers, chemists, physicians …etc.
We show the procedures of patent granting in the patent office in Egypt in addition to the international offices in patents like USPTO in USA and EPO in Europe. There is some technical points in patents has been discussed in the workshop e.g., the disclosure on inventions, term of protection, links between academia and industry, exploitation of the inventions and duration of patent granting.
The main recommendations of the workshop are to raise the awareness on IP among different fields, to expand in teaching IP in the first degree for all the students in the University (at least one obligatory course on IP principles).