DOST assures inventors their due

MANILA, Philippines - The Department of Science and Technology (DOST) said it was doing its best to fulfill its mandate to help the country’s inventors and innovators.

Science Secretary Mario Montejo said that the DOST was facilitating 100 patent applications filed by inventors through its unit, the Technology Application and Promotion Institute (TAPI).

“We are continuously looking for better ways to serve our clientele, including inventors,” Montejo said. 

Montejo said he has instructed TAPI director Edgar Garcia to facilitate 100 patent applications for the year.  

Montejo issued the statement late last month after Filipino Inventors Society (FIS) president Bormeo Modanza bewailed the DOST-TAPI’s failure to extend any assistance to inventors, especially in the matter of tax exemptions in the manufacture and startup years’ sales of inventors’ products blamed on bureaucratic red tape in the DOST unit.

Modanza said that this frustration over the uselessness of the DOST-TAPI raised the need for the creation of a Philippine Inventors Commission.

Patent is an intellectual property right granted exclusively to inventors “to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention” throughout the country.  

TAPI is being presented by the DOST as its “ lead agency” in supporting local inventions and DOST’s arm for technology transfer and commercialization per Executive Order No. 128, formerly known as the Philippine Invention Development Institute prior to post-EDSA reorganization. 

To achieve the target number of patent filings, Garcia and his team have reportedly explored “creative ways” to increase patent filings, such as partnering with patent professionals like the Association of PAQE Professionals Inc. and the Innovation and Technology Support Office network of the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines. The APP is the country’s only all-patent agents association. 

The FIS, as well as the FIS Producers Cooperative (FISPC), had earlier complained of the numerous requirements that the TAPI was imposing for the provision of technical assistance.

“(The validation for government support) is needed to ensure that our taxpayers’ money is well-spent, aside from meeting our quality requirements,” Montejo explained. 

The DOST, meanwhile, has bagged an international award for its successful light ranging and detection (LiDAR) 3D hazard mapping project implemented by its Project DREAM or Disaster Risk Assessment, Exposure and Mitigation team.

Dr. Eric Paringit, program leader of Project DREAM, and DOST Assistant Secretary Raymund Liboro received the prestigious Asia Geospatial Excellence Award during the inaugural ceremony of the Asia Geospatial Forum 2014 held in Jakarta last Nov. 25. 

A component of DOST-funded Project NOAH or Nationwide Operational Assessment for Hazards, DREAM-LiDAR addresses and helps mitigate the effects of flooding disasters by collecting precise geospatial data using LiDAR technology to produce 3D high-resolution maps of the country’s major river systems, their watersheds and floodplains.          – Rainier Allan Ronda