On World Intellectual Property Day, the theme of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) for the year 2020 is “Innovating for a Green Future”. In light of this, it is appropriate to mention that ecological issues have become priority needs for society. This subject has come to occupy the economic, political and social agendas of more and more States, demonstrating that we are facing a race against time that forces us to implement key measures as soon as possible to reverse the damage we are causing and are causing to Planet Earth. In view of this, Intellectual Property is not unaware of this need, since, hand in hand with innovation, it has turned creations and inventions into essential tools that allow for the practical environmental sustainability that will safeguard the well-being of the human race. Costa Rica does not escape from this reality and its history of environmental support has allowed it to become a seedbed of ecological innovation through the Start-Ups.
Fortunately there are many examples of support for these innovative sectors that we can find in our country. Among them we find incubators such as the Social Skins program, which seeks to promote social innovation startups of this type, whose economic support and mentoring for the project and its inventors are provided by Grupo Bolívar – Davivienda. Another project to be highlighted is the Stratos Group, being this the first incubation program specialized in green matters to be developed in Costa Rica by the hand of Promotora del Comercio Exterior de Costa Rica (PROCOMER) and Instituto Tecnológico, an initiative that will allow inventors to develop their creations with the support of these entities. It is worth mentioning the great work of PROCOMER, which in 2019 also developed the program “Strengthening the Costa Rican ecosystem of green technology startups for internationalization” together with the Costa Rica – United States Foundation for Cooperation (CRUSA), becoming a space in which Costa Rica generated specialized incubation processes in a specific sector, in this case Green Technologies.
As shown by these actions nations, the inventions that are taking place under the start-ups have come to break the traditional process of inventions in society, and it would be wise to predict that this type of Intellectual Property seedbeds will be the cradles of technological inventions that will come to revolutionize the world in environmental matters, so with this, more and more countries will join these Costa Rican initiatives that will allow to place in their priority projects the support to the inventors of green technology, a technology that now more than ever is needed by our global society.
Associate
García & Bodán
Costa Rica