More than 3,000 participants are expected to join an annual forum held by the Trade Development Council to exchange ideas on intellectual property (IP) development and hunt for business opportunities.

The Business of IP Asia Forum will be staged at the Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai on November 19 and 20.

Themed “Powering Commercial Success Through IP and Innovation”, the council’s associate executive director Silas Chu said nearly 100 speakers will discuss how IP and innovation can be used to build competitive advantages and draw capital investments, among others.

He said that for the first time, the forum will include a new chapter centred on IP commercialisation that aims to better help enterprises manage their IP.

“Previously in the BIP Asia forum, we may be focusing more on creative IP,” Chu said.

“But as Hong Kong moves towards the goal of becoming an international I&T centre, we are increasingly seeing a lot of interesting development, especially in the area of AI, in the area of life science and all those deep tech. There will be surging demand as a result.”

A startup from the Education University, which is pioneering their AI-enabled storytelling robot to help with students’ learning, is joining the forum.

Its director Hades Ho said he hopes to talk to potential clients and experts on how to expand the use of their project.

“Now our robot is mainly focused on the education aspect. But to be honest, this robot can [be] used in other aspects, for example, we have some further research on elderly, how to use this robot on elderly,” he said.

The Entrepreneur Day that features more than 370 startups and innovation projects across 14 countries and regions, will be held alongside the two-day forum, allowing companies that have just kick-started their operations to conduct business matching and to help them expand.


Edited by Aaron Tam