WSO Joins the Philippine’s National MSME Week

From “technovating” to “pushstarts” for start-ups, this year’s National MSME Week in the Philippines was full of great advice and information for micro, small and medium sized enterprises. The WIPO Singapore Office (WSO) was pleased to join the program and host a session on the value of ideas in business and the way to transition ideas into intellectual property. The session also covered the importance of IP as a tool to help MSMEs build a robust business primed for growth in the digital economy.

The theme of the week was RISE MSMEs in the Digital Economy – Resilient, Innovative, Sustainable and Empowered. With this in mind, the WSO shared information on the importance of developing an IP strategy in relation to an SME’s activity within the digital marketplace, and specifically on e-commerce platforms. It was suggested that businesses need to fully understand the IP policy of each e-commerce platform they are active on and the strength of the platform’s take down policy in the case of clear IP infringements. The WSO also put forward the idea of building an IP culture amongst staff, so that they become the eyes and ears of an SME - monitoring the market for infringing merchandise or content when they are shopping on various platforms.

More than 200 MSMEs joined the session.

The WSO’s involvement was thanks to the excellent ongoing collaboration we have with the Philippine Trade Training Center.