On June 4th-5th, 2019 a regional seminar “The Modern Aspects of Copyright Use” was held in the National Library of the Republic of Belarus in Minsk. This important scientific and practical event had been organized by the State Committee of Science and Technologies of the Republic of Belarus, the National Centre of Intellectual Property and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
Polotsk State University was represented by Tatiana Goncharova, head of the Scientific Research Department, Vladimir Bogonenko, head of the Department of Civil Law, and Kristina Savitskaya, senior lecturer at the Department of Civil Law of the university.
The high importance level of this event was proven by the presence of delegates from multiple foreign countries. In addition, the event was led by Alexander Shumilin, head of the State Committee of Science and Technologies of the Republic of Belarus, Francis Harry, general director of WIPO, Saule Tlevlesova, president of the Eurasian Patent Organization, and Vladimir Ryabolov, general director of the National Centre of Intellectual Property.
One of the main characteristics of this event was its practical orientation towards various questions of intellectual property and related topics. Recent common tendencies of intellectual property development, copyright, especially in relation to digital educational space, patents, management in the field of intellectual property, strategies of intellectual property development, commercialization of intellectual property objects, etc. – all these questions were discussed at the seminar.
Presentations and speeches presented at the seminar were very informative, for example the speeches of:
- Alexander Shumilin, the head of the State Committee of Science and Technologies of the Republic of Belarus, was talking about the importance of intellectual property for the economics, about export statistics of high tech products, about the questions of intellectual property management.
- Francis Harry, general director of WIPO, was talking about intellectual property’s influence on various branches of economics, about the importance of supporting the release and use of high tech products in business, about the role of WIPO in management of intellectual property, about creating a favorable competitive environment on the market of offer and demand, about supporting regional projects in different countries, about investing in intellectual property, about the phenomenon of digital intellectual property.
- Saula Tlevlesova, president of the Eurasian Patent Organization, noted the achievements of Belarus in the field of intellectual property, the advantages of the Belarusian law system concerning the intellectual property. Within the topic of intellectual property, she also underlined the fact that Belarus is ranked 5th in the world by universities development.
- Vladimir Ryabolov, general director of the National Centre of Intellectual Property, was talking about the importance of intellectual property in conditions of ongoing globalization processes, about a big social and economic effect of copyright, about the attention that is being given to intellectual property by the deputies, scientists, practitioners and businessmen.
- Olexandr Shevchenko, assistant of the project leader from the Department for Transition and Developed Countries (TDC), WIPO, was insisting on the importance of intellectual property for business, discussing the economic essence of intellectual property, presenting the services offered by WIPO and the major goals of this organization, as well as questions of patenting and activity of the WIPO Academy.
- Aikut Guylalanlar, partner of TLS.IP (a consulting company specializing on intellectual property and innovation management, Turkey), was talking about problems related to economical utility of patents, about monitoring their commercial utility (the speaker said that only 20% of patents had a value on the market), about legal accompaniment of patenting, about so-called “patent map” and quality check of patents.
The seminar became a perfect platform for discussing many precise topics related to intellectual property, to orientation on the necessity to actively use the objects of intellectual property in business, to recommendations for improvement of managerial processes of intellectual property and supporting new initiatives in this field. We need to emphasize that Polotsk State University was mentioned multiple times during the conferences as one of the flagships of such an important domain as intellectual property in the university educational system. One of the recent facts proving that, is the laureateship of the International Contest of Scientific Works by undergraduates and graduates (organized by the Financial University of the Government of the Russian Federation) assigned to Anastasia Raduyk, 4th-year undergraduate from the Faculty of Law, with her scientific work “Commercialization of Objects of Intellectual Property” (supervised by Kristina Savitskaya, senior lecturer at the Department of Civil Law of Polotsk State University).
V. Bogonenko, head of the Department of Civil Law