A Malta Intellectual Property Awards with a €50,000 fund launched to celebrate World Intellectual Property Day, celebrated tomorrow, 26th April 2020.
The fund aims to encourage individuals or enterprises to come up with innovative, creative and technological ideas that can contribute to Malta’s economy and society.
‘Intellectual Property’ refers to all products and works that are the fruit of the human mind and therefore plays a significant role in our daily lives.
Rights accorded by the state in respect of intellectual property such as copyright, patents, trademarks and registered designs provide businesses, artists and inventors with a means to protect products and creations and also encourage them to invest in innovation and creativity to the benefit of society.
The Malta Intellectual Property Awards, run by the Commerce Department, are aimed at recognising and promoting the creation of Intellectual Property in Malta. The Award has four categories:
Award for Creative Initiative
The ‘Award for Creative Initiative’ rewards individuals or enterprises operating in the cultural and creative sectors. For the purposes of the ‘Malta Intellectual Property Awards’, submissions in this category shall be in respect of artistic or audio-visual works or a combination thereof.
Award for Scientific Initiative
The ‘Award for Scientific Initiative’ recognises science-based research findings generated by science students, academics and professionals. The initiative could be a new product, a significant improvement of an existing product, a new use of an existing product or a new process.
Award for Technological Initiative
The ‘Award for Technological Initiative’ requires the development of new and innovative, or step-change improvements, with respect to problem solving of real commercial or societal challenges. The outcome should be an innovative technological process or an existing solution that is improved radically for application in a novel situation.
Award for Emerging Innovation Initiative
This award is divided into two sub-categories namely:
Age 16 to 30 and
Age 31 and over.
The ‘Award for Emerging Innovation’ acknowledges initiative aimed at encouraging projects that are not created by experienced creative, scientific or professional persons, but which nonetheless are still promising and innovative. Eligible projects for this category must be the work of an individual or entity that is a newcomer to the field i.e. has been operating in the field for less than 5 years. Projects submitted under this category must fall under one of the previous 3 categories of either Creative, Scientific or Technological Initiative.
Projects should be tangible, concrete and well developed into either actual or very promising products or processes. Any concepts which are essentially based on abstract ideas and intentions are not considered to fall within the scope of the awards.
The winners of the first and second place for categories one, two and three shall receive €8,000 and €4,000 respectively, for each category.
The winners of categories 4a) and 4b) shall each receive €4,000.
In line with the theme of the World Intellectual Property Day, who can show to the satisfaction of the selection committee how their project promotes preservation of the environment and efforts to tackle climate change, will be eligible for an additional award as follows:
Applicants who place first in categories one, two and three will receive an additional €1,000 each
Applicants who place second in categories one, two and three and winners of the category 4a and 4b will receive an additional €600 each
The fund was launched by the Economy, Investment and Small Business Ministry, under Minister Silvio Schembri.
“Historically speaking, the most revolutionary ideas were developed during very difficult times, similar to what we are living now due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a perfect opportunity to encourage innovative minds and projects developed by individuals or enterprises. I encourage everyone to come forward with their ideas and use these awards as an incentive to develop new ideas for the common good. I thank the efforts of the Commerce Department for running this initiative”, he said.
Guidelines for the awards may be found on www.commerce.gov.mt.
Applications will be received via email on [email protected] from Monday 11th May until Sunday 7th June.
Submissions are to be made on the relative forms which will be made available as from Monday 4th May.
