June 30-July 1, 2007

Session and Section Meeting on "Strategy Development for Knowledge Transfer in Asian Academic Community"

On June 30 and July 1, JSPS and the Intellectual Property Association of Japan (IPAJ) organized a session and section meeting held during IPAJ's fifth annual research meeting at the University of Tokyo.

This strategic program on knowledge transfer is aimed at developing an academic group, to be called the "Asian IP Society," by the year 2010. Its members will discuss a wide array of intellectual property-related issues relevant to Asian countries.

This meeting was held as part of that strategic program. It assembled key persons in the S&T and IP fields from Asian countries to share information.

In the first session on the "state of intellectual property and related issues among Asian higher education and research institutions," lecturers introduced initiatives being taken in their respective countries. In the following section meeting on the "state of intellectual property and innovation in Asia and related challenges," the panelists and participants engaged each other in an active exchange of views on international standardization of technology including intellectual property rights. Over the course of the discussions, it was realized that TLOs are strongly influenced by regional and national characteristics and that gaps in IP perception exist even between generations of the same country.

Through this meeting, members of Japan's IP community were able to strengthen their contacts with key persons in Asia and begin the process of building a strong network to facilitate cross-border collaboration in the region.