The tie-up move is part of the government’s IPO program to keep up with global standards practices.

The program includes training IPO’s patent examiners in Alexandria, Virginia.

IPO is targetting to cut period of approval of inventive patent application.

"We’ve streamlined our system. We’ve reduced our backlog. We want to bring down our turnaround time to 4.5 to 5 years which is the international best practice," said Lawyer Adrian S. Cristobal Jr., IPO director general, in an interview at the sidelines of the "Art in Denim"competition.

At present, it takes about five years for a patent to be approved which Cristobal said is already a big improvement from the eight- to 10-year in the past years.

Developing people’s expertise in patent examination is pertinent to speeding up approvals since inventive patents deal on highly-specialized scientific fields.

IPO now has 50 patent examiners who have specialization in Chemistry, Biology, Engineering, and other sciences.

But it may need to beef up this skilled workforce as patent applications in biotechnology, nanotechnology, or information technology are expected to balloon with the recent realization on the importance of protecting intellectual property (IP).

The lack of IP protection in the country has deprived many Filipino inventors in the past to claim protect their rights over their inventions.

There are at present close to 400 patent applications in biotechnology.

In order to likewise cut down on approval time, the availability of a complete database on patents is maintained by IPO.

"Next year, all our patent documents will be online so everyone can check before even going into a research. (Imagine) spending a lot of time only to find out there is already an available research on an area," he said.

The IPO’s database will give researchers access to other databases in the US, Europe, and other countries.

One strategy to speedi up patent approvals is for IPO to train in-house patent examiners in biotechnology-focused institutions. It has started training science research specialists at the Philippine Rice Research Institute (Philrice) on intellectual property.

"We’re exploring a program like what we have with Philrice with UP (University of the Philippines), Ateneo, and La Salle," he said.

The IPO has been batting for regulations that will help promote inventions in local industries such as an amendment of the Intellectual Property Code (Republic Act 8923) which will pave the way to competition in the pharmaceutical industry and lower price of drugs for Filipino consumers.

The amendment though is being opposed by the Pharmaceutical and Health-Care Association of the Philippines (PHAP), whose members are mostly multinational drug companies, Cristobal said.

It has also been trying to popularize the idea of patenting since there appears to be a low level of knowledge on intellectual property right in the country.