Good Intention Doesn’t Always Win a Date

I jumped to the conclusion that I would make myself available (at all costs) to attend this event even though I was invited late – for one simple reason: I wanted find out who is who in the Intellectual Property (IP) world of Malaysia.

On 20 May 2014, the Malaysian Intellectual Property Association (MIPA) held a conference, National Intellectual Property Convention (NIPC) 2014, with the theme ‘Harnessing IP towards High Income Nation’ at Istana Hotel, KL.


Being a software developer working towards making my first pot of gold in the area of IT software innovation, I was hoping that the event will provide me a crashed course about the lucrative world of intellectual property business, technology patent in particular.

What I was met with wasn’t all too bad, even though in reality, I didn’t see any venture capitalist talent scouting around; instead I was surrounded by bunch of lawyers and so-called IP agents.



Everything has a noble intention. The event was one where I saw extremely talent people discussed open-ended topics related to intellectual property with no absolute intentions whatsoever.

It inspired panelist Datuk Dr. Vinod Sekhar, President and Group Chief Executive, Petra Group, who went on the stage, educating people about the essence of making-through today’s harsh reality of the business world. “Real success comes from the lesson of failure and to keep going, the only problem is the costs,” said Datuk Sekhar.

It then occurred to me that for Malaysia to achieve high income status, Malaysian have to make a decisive vote - fence sitters to be disqualified permanently.

Malaysia is at cross-road now - forget about the election - we just couldn’t afford to stay in comfort zone forever.

I personally don’t think that the top-down approach will work for Malaysia. When I say top-down, I mean we had the politicians decided on a virtual reality which was deemed best for Malaysian to go forward; to be followed by all kinds of stimulus programs aimed at helping selective groups of people achieving pre-determined success.

Notwithstanding that there was no fish in the pond, let alone knowing how to fish.

Just as what the conference favors, the bottom-up approach should be the right thing to do.

Bottom-up means free-will, free-enterprise and on-your-own. Personally, I think it is about globalization.

In my opinion, there are only two ways (but not both) for Malaysia to move forward: 1.) Blue Pill, 2.) Red Pill. If you are not sure what I am talking about, go to a legitimate video store to buy the Matrix movie, never the Pasar Malam.

Malaysian must understand that Malaysia is not the only thing in this life, even though this land is blessed with many good things like natural disaster-free, year long summer, natural resources-rich and multi-cultures society.

It is time we join the converged marketplace and leverage on becoming a global citizen.

If you don’t agree with me, Mr Mohd Sharizal Mustapah Kamil, Vice President of Business &Technology Advisory Division of MDV pointed it out most accurately; where he expressed that it may not be financially logical to expect the financial institutions to accept intellectual property as 100% collateral when there is no real value in it – just for the sake of becoming an high income nation ?

This brings us to the question of whether to go to the Silicon Valley (U.S) to join them or to setup one here to compete with them ? Which option is better ?

Then of course, SME is the backbone of the economy of Malaysia, with over 77% consist of micro-enterprises (less than 5 employees). Therefore, SMEs should still continue with applications for trademarks, copyrights and etc. Engage your legal consultants and IP agents but never settles on the title of Jaguh Kampung.

Do you agree?

By the way, I was also hoping that attending this event would give me some free lessons over legal aspect pertaining to the IT and media industry and I got what I came for:

Here is a snapshot:
  1. Any form of publication without permission from the content owner is subjected to the Copyright Act 1987. This is actually not very Internet friendly, how could the Internet got linked up (in the first place) with web pages hyper-linking each other NOT based on natural intuition?

    Nevertheless, content owners must adhere to the take-down procedures stipulated by the law when enforcing copyright infringement.

  2. Only personal opinion expressions are free from liability of infringement – this means that if you want to express dissatisfaction over a product, you have to express it as your personal opinion, do not generalize the expression.

  3. Software source code is part of literacy work, nevertheless, is considered intangible because it is hard to copyright it; changes to a single line of source code will deem the copyright void.

Contact your legal consultants for more answers.

Comments

Unknown said…
Entrepreneurs are a unique group of people. Not only do they think differently; they act differently. They draw on personality traits, habits and mind-sets to come up with ideas that straddle the line between insanity and genius. But just because you’re an original thinker and came up with an idea to replace gasoline in cars doesn’t mean you’re cut out to be an entrepreneur.

If you ever wondered if you were an entrepreneur, check out the following list. You may not have all these traits or skills, yet if you have some, this is a pretty good indicator that you have what it takes
Brandon Teoh said…
Yup. I agree. I think Jack Ma from Alibaba is a good example of best entrepreneur.