National Institute of Intellectual Property
The National Institute of Intellectual Property of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Kazakhstan (Qazpatent) partnered with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to host the third iteration of the WIPO-Kazakhstan Summer School on Intellectual Property.
This exclusive, two-week summer course was held from June 18 to June 28, 2024, in Astana in a hybrid format to accommodate participants from Belarus, Kazakhstan, Moldova, and Russia.
The representatives of WIPO, the Eurasian Patent Office, Qazpatent, patent attorneys, scientists, and practicing lawyers provided trainees with a complete immersion in intellectual property law. The program covered 32 topics, including patenting in Kazakhstan and abroad, the international patent landscape, the clash of trademarks with domain names and trade names, the protection of geographical indications, and other topics.
As part of the WIPO-Kazakhstan Summer School, participants studied basics of patent search, commercial databases (ASPI) and their analytics tools, as well as case studies on franchise packaging and protection of intellectual property rights. Special attention was paid to the protection of industrial designs, trade secrets, licensing and technology transfer issues.
Along with mastering theoretical material, the WIPO-Kazakhstan Summer School trainees visited “Astana Hub” - the largest international technology park of IT startups in Central Asia, which is the locomotive for the development of the innovation ecosystem in Kazakhstan and an internationally recognized hub for the development of technology business.
Also, the master's program “Intellectual Property and Business Law” was presented to the participants of the WIPO Summer School. This is the first and only LL.M. program in intellectual property law in the Eurasian space, organized in 2024 by WIPO in cooperation with the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan and Maqsut Narikbayev University.
At the end of the Summer School, a workshop was held with the consideration of real cases on trademarks, as well as a presentation by the participants of their own positions on the completed homework, where the high results of the completed training were demonstrated and final group works on three topics were presented: copyright, commercialization of industrial property objects, inventions.
At the end of the Summer School, trainees were awarded certificates from the WIPO Academy.
For reference: In 2024, the WIPO Summer Schools are being held in seventeen countries, including China, Korea, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, the UK, and the USA. The WIPO-Kazakhstan Summer School is the only event of this format in Central Asia.
