GUEST & SPEAKER STRUCTURE

Chief Guest: Abdun Nase Khan, Secretary, Ministry of Industries

Chair:  Md. Jahangir Hossain, Director General - Department of Patents, Industrial Designs and Trademarks 

Moderator: A B M Hamidul Mishbah, Barrister-at-Law of Lincoln's Inn Advocate, Supreme Court of Bangladesh and Managing Partner of Old Bailey Chambers

Participants:  University leadership, research institutions, DPDT and IP authorities, industry R&D leaders, investors, Patent lawyers/IPlawyers, existing private sector companies who scaled up local research outputs into commercial ventures,  and development partners, Dr. Mohammad Shahedur Rahman, Professor, Department of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering, Jahangirnagar University

CONTEXT & BACKGROUND

Bangladeshi researchers publish thousands of indexed papers a year, yet resident patent applications remain in the low hundreds (WIPO IP Statistics) and university-to-industry licensing is close to nonexistent - most public universities have no functioning technology transfer office, and IP ownership rules for publicly funded research are unclear. The contrast with peer economies is instructive: countries that built commercialization systems - clear IP ownership, TTOs, proof-of-concept funds and first-buyer procurement - converted academic output into companies, licenses and export products. Bangladesh's research base is now large enough for the same machinery to pay off.

SYNOPSIS

Research, inventions and prototypes create economic value only when they can be protected, transferred, financed and adopted. Convened at the highest level of government, this roundtable focuses on the practical system needed to move knowledge from universities, laboratories and innovators into industry and markets: IP awareness and ownership clarity, patents and design protection, technology transfer offices, licensing and valuation, industry-sponsored research, research-based startups and commercialization finance - with the proposed Innovation Hub as the national connector for research, IP support, industry problems, investors and market entry.

OBJECTIVE OF THE SESSION

Define a practical national IP and technology-transfer system - ownership rules, TTOs, valuation, licensing and finance - that carries Bangladeshi research into industry and markets through the Innovation Hub.