Federal Service for Intellectual Property, Patents and Trademarks (Rospatent) will establish a special unit in the Skolkovo Innograd. The Memorandum of Cooperation was signed by Head of the department Boris Simonov and President of the Foundation for Development of the Center of Research and Commercializing of New Technologies Viktor Vekselberg on Thursday.
The purpose of the document is to maintain conditions, favorable for timely and successful legal protection of the intellectual activity products, created in Skolkovo.
"In Skolkovo we set a task to create an environment, not just infrastructure. This is certainly a new round of modernization, demonstration of a new concept, - said Boris Simonov. - We are pleased and honored that Rospatent, first among the executive bodies of Russia, signs a Memorandum of Cooperation with the Skolkovo Foundation. The skeptics, who believe that such a document is premature because Skolkovo will materialize only in a few years, are completely wrong. Material objects are not that important for us; right now we can do a lot to protect intellectual property of the innovators, who will work for Skolkovo project. And this is a direct path to successful commercialization of their intellectual property objects".
Viktor Vekselberg, in turn, said that intellectual property protection is crucial for the development of Innograd: "Creation of a new, innovation-friendly environment includes many elements, and protection of intellectual property by "strong "patents is a very important component of the success of our project. This is a difficult but crucial task. Talking to the future "residents" of Skolkovo, we now see that the issue of patenting is very important for them. The Cooperation Memorandum, signed by the Foundation and Rospatent, is just the first step, we still have a very large amount of work. In this context, the establishment of a special Skolkovo Rospatent unit, on the model of Rospatent units in federal subjects, is a very positive sign indeed. "