S'pore patent site bags US award

E-Gov 2001 is organized by the US government and sponsored by Accenture. It is an International Government Conference and Exposition. The event, now in its third year, will be held at the Washington Convention Center in Washington DC next week.

The TrailBlazer Award was presented in recognition of Ipos' use of the Internet to promote Intellectual Property (IP) services for the global IP community, through its IP portal SurfIP. The Web site became operational in July 2000, and was officially launched last November.

From a pool of 300 international nominations, 21 other companies were also given the TrailBlazer Award.

Ipos will be receiving its award in the US capital on July 12, 2001.

Ipos also announced the roll-out of its new suite of services, called SurfIP marketplace. This is a platform that provides the IP community--comprising IP owners, potential buyers and sellers, licensors and licensees-- with information to help them commercialize IP assets.

When asked if Ipos has plans to segment its marketplace by verticals or industry, Ipos director-general Liew Woon Yin replied in the negative, but said that "later down the road we might review the situation".

Liew added that Ipos hopes to roll out another service on SurfIP by year end, which will allow users to conduct an aggregated search of IP databases from approximately 10 online IP exchanges.

Ipos was converted to a statutory board in April 2001 and is self-funding. Besides its regulatory role in IP matters, the statutory board is responsible for raising awareness of IP and fostering a conducive environment for it to flourish.