The Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) will launch in the middle of 2025 a new service that would determine the value of IP assets for financing and eventual commercialization.
Rowel Barba, IPOPHL director-general, told reporters over the weekend part of the four strategies of the newly-launched Philippine Intellectual Property Strategy 2025-2030 is to build systems for IP valuation and commercialization.
Barba said the lack of a system to value IP assets has made it difficult for their owners to access financing from banks for the purpose of commercializing their creations and eventually earn from them.
Barba said banks could not accept these creations as collateral in the absence of the confirmed value of the asset.
“Unlike in real property, one can present the market value or the zonal value and the bank can lend up to 70 percent of the market value of the land…as collateral,” he said.
Barba said this concern is not unique to the Philippines as other countries have also yet to have their own valuation and commercialization systems.
But he said countries like Japan and South Korea have been successful in IP valuation and commercialization. IP owners get support from state banks.
Barba said while government-owned banks are receptive to the idea, IPOPHL “has to capacitate itself first how to value assets.”
“We are studying all the models in other countries and will identify which fits the Philippine market best. Maybe we can start with how much has been invested in terms of money and time in coming up with an IP asset as initial basis,” said Barba.
He said IPOPHL in the past has been approached by IP owners like game developers and animators on how much they can sell their creations.
One innovation that was successfully commercialized was the government-backed lagundi-derived cough medicine.
Barba said developers of the medicine that included University of the Philippines-Manila took a different approach, through technology transfer and licensing agreements with pharmaceutical companies. A certain percentage of the sales goes to the developer. In the case of patents, Barba said valuation is initially addressed by a fairness opinion issued by the Department of Science and Technology.
