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29 August, 2019
Singapore has been very clear about its intention to become a global intellectual property hub for several years now, having unveiled a 10-year master plan to develop its IP initiatives at the start of the decade.
Since 2013, a number of programs have been implemented aimed at strengthening intellectual property protection rights for companies operating in Singapore, encouraging businesses to set up there, and send the country flying up the IP Index rankings.
Some of these initiatives have included:
- A SGD100m financing scheme, launched in 2014, allowing businesses to use intellectual property as collateral when applying for bank loans.
- The Intellectual Property Office of Singapore’s (IPOS) SGD1bn Makara Innovation Fund, granted on the basis of strong intellectual property.
- A partnership with Deloitte to help firms commercialise their IP rights.
- Singapore’s Supreme Court also has a dedicated IP Court to deal with increasingly complicated intellectual property cases, a symptom of IP’s growing presence.
More recently, Singapore signed an MoU with the Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF), a Russian venture capital fund and accelerator. This latest move will give Russian firms greater access to Singapore’s robust IP protection, creating more branding and commercialisation opportunities for smaller firms and startups in particular, as well as access to consultancy services, patent search and analytics, training programmes and workshops.
We spoke to Sheena Jacob, partner at JurisAsia LLC, and Daren Tang, chief executive of the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore, to find out more about Singapore’s ever-growing IP protections and what this means for businesses worldwide.
