The Egyptian Patent Office (EGPO), in partnership with the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), has announced the launching of the new online Intellectual Property Management System on Wednesday with financing worth $2.9m.
The newly launched EGPO Search and E-Service System (EGPO SES) fully automates the patent application process for the public and government officials, in support for the digital transformation of the public service under the “Digital Egypt” strategy.
The new electronic system is designed to provide the improved transaction for patent application and management between EGPO and target beneficiaries. The quality and reliability of public services in the patent domain is expected to be remarkably improved, resulting in greater citizen engagement and satisfaction.
“Through EGPO SES, the agents and applicants will be able to enjoy 100% electronic service from filing to payment; Public officials in EGPO will work in the stable linkage system for their administration process; and the processed information will be shared to the public users and patent examiners through the online search system,” Korean Project manager explained, “The system will eliminate redundant data gathering and capturing process, and simplify the whole procedure significantly. People can also access the system not just through PCs but also through mobile phones and tablets. This will be a monumental step closer to the paperless society.”
“Under the Digital ODA Strategy in the Post-COVID era, Korean government is strongly committed to support the Egyptian government’s Digital Egypt initiative,” mentioned South Korean Ambassador in Egypt Hong Jin-Wook assuring that this project complies with Egypt`s vision of 2030 and with the government`s digitalization strategy.
“In addition, this project also complies with Korean`s policy of expanding our collaboration forward in digital ODA,” Ambassador Hong added.
He mentioned that some people might be concerned that the automation projects might reduce the number of Jobs, like replacing the human job with an automated system.
Ambassador Hong assured that the launch of this automation project can actually encourage more and more people to make more efforts to invest their energy into innovation, making them to apply more, to register their patent rights. This means that Egypt will have much more meaningful and practical innovation related projects, which ultimately, will contribute to increasing the number of jobs.
“Aside from that, I’m sure it can have very positive ramification effects upon the economy coming out of the innovation that can make all of us get more access to the expanding economic, business opportunities,” he said.
He mentioned that on the foundation of this project with EGPO, Korea will create more cooperation opportunities to improve the digital accessibility for the Egyptian people, including the disadvantaged groups, and enhance the efficiency of the public services taking advantage of Korea’s e-government experiences.
He mentioned that Egypt has become one of the core partner countries for South Korea’s development cooperation for the following five years starting from this year to the year 2025.
Agreeing with the Ambassador, Mona Ahmed, the first Secretary of Egypt’s Ministry of International Cooperation, said that KOICA has a significant cooperation with Egypt in grant type projects reaching $71m in several fields like IT, Vocational Education, Higher Education, culture, and patent, aligned with Egyptian vision 2030 and SDGs 2030 which has resulted in many success stories.
She mentioned that currently the cooperation with KOICA has expanded to trilateral cooperation with UN Women and UNFPA with a total of $7m to develop women empowerment, youth capabilities and combating violence against Women. And other future projects to be followed.
Ahmed said that KOICA has contributed for the capacity building of government officials of several ministries, mentioning that her ministry has close cooperation with Korea Development Institute (KDI) through Knowledge Sharing program as we have implemented 11 programs; among them green ICT, pension, planning, trade and industry, VAT and our patent project.
She said that the grant project for the improvement of Intellectual Property Automation System with the Egyptian Patent Office amounting $2.9m was initiated first through knowledge sharing program with KDI in 2017 and ended by fruitful consultations and recommendations from the Korean experts then has been chosen by the KDI to be one of the best projects of KSP.
She stressed that the project will contribute positively to the Egyptian economy through applying a new patent automation system encouraging Egyptian inventors to register their copyrights.
“In fact in the near future there will be more success stories with Korean partner to share especially this year, Egypt has been selected to be one of Korea’s priority ODA partners. Also, this will be the first year that both Governments will draft a Country Partnership Strategy for the upcoming 5 years that will be reflected positively in financing and implementing many pioneer Egyptian-Korean projects,” she said.
For his part, Mahmoud Sakr, the President of ASRT stated that as part of the academy’s commitment to building an intellectual property system in which people can demonstrate their creativity fully in a wide variety of fields, including science and technology, with results that will lead to maintaining and advancing industrial competitiveness and improving the people’s lives and which will help Egypt to be an effective player in international society, the Academy of Scientific Research and Technology has launched a number of projects that contribute to driving innovation and technology transfer and bridging the gap between academia and the business community
“The Egyptian Patent Office was keen, within its vision, to develop and modernize its infrastructure, build smart information system, not to mention promoting community awareness of the importance of intellectual property; thus, contributing to realizing a qualitative leap in the Egyptian society through incubation of technology, and providing an environment that encourages the building of the capacities of young people, and the promotion of innovation and creativity ,” he said.
Sakr said that the Egyptian Patent Office is committed to offer high quality products and services and hence, it is keen on adopting high quality procedures and practices. EGPO recognizes the importance of Quality Management System (QMS) to ensure that all patent processing steps are completed in a timely and high-quality manner.
“In seeking to improve operational performance, we find that leading Intellectual Property groups are now embracing advanced workflow technology as a key to their success. Workflow solutions can deliver rapid returns on investment because they improve resource utilization, work-cycle times and quality-control costs. In addition to the efficiency and cost benefits, workflow solutions also benefit users by improving the visibility of and confidence in the work process,” he stressed.
