MANILA, Philippines -- Saying that patent applications provide a good indicator of the country's technological innovation, the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) of the Philippines urged local universities and research and development institutions to patent good ideas, and not be content in merely publishing them in academic papers.

Records of the IPO showed that about 97 percent of the patents applied for and granted by their office belonged to foreign applications, while the rest belonged to Filipinos, said Adrian Cristobal, director general of IPO, during the first National Conference on Intellectual Property and Technology Commercialization.

Cristobal said that only 21 patents were granted to universities and research and development institutions (RDIs) from 1948 to 2006. He added the total number of patent applications from universities and RDIs reached only 43 applications from 1995 to 2005.

Cristobal said the lack of knowledge and understanding of the IP system has been seen as one of the factors hindering patenting in the country.

"We discovered that, among universities and R&Ds, knowledge on IP is very limited," he said.

He stressed that the prevailing culture of "publish or perish" remained in local universities and RDIs, encouraging most scientists and researchers to publish their work in scientific and technical journals to maintain tenure rather than develop their work and obtain IP protection through patents.

Cristobal also pointed out the absence of a sound IP policy in the community as another factor hampering patenting in the local universities.

"Very few universities and RDIs have an internal IP policy that lays the parameters, rules, rights and obligations that guide the ownership, use and allocation of benefits over innovations. Moreover, there is no institutionalized mechanism, much less an office, that is equipped to assist innovators in protecting these technological innovations and promote them. In many universities abroad, these offices are called Technology Licensing Offices (or TLO)," he said.

In short, Cristobal said that the country's universities and RDIs have no institutionalized effort to patent any university researches and commercialize the same.

He said publicly funded universities also have to contend with legal questions on whether they can commercialize technological innovations and profit from these considering they were supported by public funds.

Cristobal said that IPO has been conducting conferences in local universities to reach out to them, and teach them about the value of IP.

"Universities and R&D institutions must start developing and implementing IP policies within their communities to lay down the rules of ownership, rights and obligations that will guide innovators. Only when these rules are clarified will commerce participate in technological innovation and commercialization," he said.