I do believe that Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) should also be integrated across the Department of Education curriculum.
As young as they are, the students should at least understand the importance of IPR and how they benefit from it.
The fact is that many people don’t know all about IPR. Worst is that many of them are being abused because they don’t know their IPR.
The World Trade Organization simplifies that “IPR’s are the rights given to persons over the creations of their minds. They usually give the creator an exclusive right over the use of his/her creation for a certain period of time.”
Intellectual Property (IP) has key forms like patents copyright, trademarks, and trade secrets. IP laws enable owners, inventors, and creators to protect their property from unauthorized users.
According to the book entitled Intellectual Property Rights, copy right is a legal term describing the economic rights given to creators of literary and artistic works, including the right to produce the works, to make copies, and to perform or display the work publicly.
Patent, on the other hand, is a contract between society as a whole and an individual inventor.
Trade secret is the information that may be used in the operation of a business and that is sufficiently valuable to afford an actual or potential economic advantage.
Meanwhile, trademark is the commercial source indicators, distinctive signs that identifies certain goods or services produced or provided by a specific person or enterprise.
Although, the IPR is common social goals to recoup investments in research, enforcement of IPR can help eliminate serious health risks.
Besides, encouraging the creation of new technologies, patent and trademark laws.
Meanwhile, Republic Act 8293, otherwise known as Intellectual Property Code of the Philippines, clearly prescribes the Intellectual Property Code and establishes the Intellectual Property rights, and provides for its powers and functions.
Accordingly, the use of intellectual property bears a social function.
RA 8293 generally aims “to promote the diffusion of knowledge and information for the promotion of national development and progress and the common good.”
Unfortunately, a lot of Filipinos, like the Indigenous Peoples, didn’t know that their IPR’s have been abused.
Thus, stop and lessen the abuse of IPR is to start educating the youth about it. And one way to do this is by integrating IPR across the curriculum in schools.
By Nancy Lee Banaña