The National Office for Technology Acquisition and Promotion (NOTAP) says it will start a yearly ranking of its Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer Offices (IPTTOs).
The Director-General of NOTAP, Dr DanAzumi Ibrahim said this on Monday in Abuja during an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria.
According to the D-G, the establishment of IPTTOs in the Nigerian knowledge institutions across the geopolitical zones is an initiative of NOTAP to launch Nigeria into the comity of technologically independent nations.
“ This was done in collaboration with the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), a United Nations agency based in Geneva, Switzerland, in order to encourage demand-driven research in Nigeria.’’
Ibrahim said that the programme which started in 2006 with the establishment of six centres had progressed both in number and quality to 60 IPTTOs across the Country.
Ibrahim said after close to two decades of the initiative, there was need to start evaluation and ranking of the IPTTOs to ascertain the viability or otherwise of some of the centres.
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He said that ranking of the IPTTOs would be in form of evaluation as well as in encouraging centres that were not performing to wake up.
He added that the criteria for ranking shall comprise visibility of the centre within the institution, documentation of institutional Research and Development (R&D) results, and institutional intellectual property policy among others.
According to him, IPTTO initiative is to sensitise the Nigerian knowledge institutions to the importance of Intellectual Property Right (IPR) as well as the need to engage in market-driven research as against conventional research.
He noted that there was disconnect between the academia and industry which the establishments of IPTTO’s would bridge and ensure that Nigerian researchers engaged in industrial needs research for their benefits and mankind.
There will be a monetary reward for the best, first runner-up and second runner-up as a way of motivating the IPTTO’s.
