Today, we celebrate the 15th anniversary from the establishment of the Educational and Information Centre in the Intellectual Property Office of the Republic of Serbia. The Educational and Information Centre was established in the framework of the IPA Project of the European Union which lasted from 2009 to 2012, and it was implemented by the European Patent Organization.
The aim of establishing this organization unit has been to fulfil the mission of the Office as the central national institution for the raising of public awareness and the social importance of intellectual property. In addition to the raising of the technical capacities of the IPO, the project undertaken at that moment enabled the performance of professional training of a certain number of employees in various foreign organizations dealing with IPRs as well as organizing foreign and domestic experts in Serbia to work on the improvement of particular skills.
Employees were trained to provide information and training in all fields of IPRs, to understand the needs of economy and scientific community in this regard, but work was also undertaken with the aim to establish cooperation with various institutions and organizations. About the completion of the project, the European Commission evaluated this project as one of the exemplary implemented projects in the Republic of Serbia.
Recognising the importance of the continually growing role of the national offices for the raising of public awareness regarding implementation and protection of IPRs, the Office demonstrated in the previous 15 years, its dedication to this aim through the numerous organized events, offering of initial consultations to clients and other services for various target groups.
Although the number of employees engaged at the tasks of information and education is much less than at the end of the project, taking into consideration synergy and cooperation with other experts from the IPO, the number of events and the number of activities kept on increasing from one year to another. The activities of information and education made our Office recognisable among our users, in particular among scientific and research community for whom the largest number of events has been held, but also among entrepreneurs and organizations for support to economy and development of innovations.
Statistics of the Educational and Information Centre 2010-2024
Note: client records at EIC have been kept since 2015.
See the photo gallery of some of the events of the past 15 years of EIC:
