Last Friday, 20 September, Professor Kelvin Willoughby of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation represented Skoltech as a speaker and panelist at the Skolkovo Foundation’s intellectual property conference, IP Academia. Professor Willoughby gave two lectures – one covered international patenting, globalization, and innovation; the second, as part of a VIP plenary session, covered the role of intellectual property in education institutions and what training is required to improve Russia’s capabilities in this area. During the panel session, he also gave a PowerPoint presentation about Skoltech.

The conference is organized by the Skolkovo Foundation to raise awareness and teach the basic principles of intellectual property. This is in part due to Russia’s inconsistent record regarding intellectual property, and an increasing interest in intellectual property from the government, scientists, professionals, and business owners across Russia.

Taking place over the course of three days with nearly one hundred speakers from across the world, IP Academia attracted a paying audience of over five hundred persons. As a formalized training program/conference with speakers covering different topics related to intellectual property, it is a good platform on which to build collaboration between Skoltech and the Skolkovo.

“Despite the robust and coherent basic IP law of Russia, this country is often portrayed by outsiders as being inhospitable to intellectual property rights. In fact, however, the Russian government cares about dealing with that problem and we at Skoltech and the Skolkovo Foundation also care about it.” – Kelvin Willoughby, Professor of Innovation and Intellectual Property (CEI)

Contact information:
Skoltech Communications
+7 (495) 280 14 81