The Emirates Foundation for Philanthropy has inaugurated the first ever workshop series in the UAE on intellectual property and patent registration.
The gathering has been designed to train researchers and award winners of the Foundation’s Science ‘&’ Technology programme on the importance of intellectual property rights and on strategies for patent approval and registration.
The first two-day training workshop is being held in collaboration with the Arab Organization for Science and Technology. The meeting highlighted the importance of research and patents to building and developing partnerships with the private sector, in the service of the development process in the country.
An additional session will be held at the American University of Sharjah on December 30-31, during which experts from the USA and Jordan will elaborate on these issues.
Both workshops have been set up to discuss the increasing importance of intellectual property protection and the requirement for a fully-fledged policy to protect these rights at universities and scientific research centres – as well as the need to address the many challenges facing research activities in the UAE.
Dr. Saleh Hashem Al Hashemi, the Emirates Foundation’s Managing Director said: “The workshops represent the first step in our ‘Seed Money for Patent Applications’ project. This aims to support Emirati researchers in academia and small business – who have patentable ideas – so that they can begin the process of protecting their intellectual property and converting it into commercial products.” Dr. Abdulla Al-Najjar, President of the Arab Foundation for Science and Technology said: “UAE is highly reputed in attracting the best scientific brains in the region and now important to implement a more consolidated intellectual property policy”.
