Innovation Centre Kosovo (ICK) and USAID’s Commercial Justice activity organized a roundtable discussion for new businesses and young entrepreneurs to emphasize the vital role that Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) plays in helping businesses grow and in protecting their creations and investments. Featuring an influential panel of intellectual property rights experts and business representatives, the roundtable marked World Intellectual Property Day on April 26, 2021, and promoted the theme “Small and medium enterprises and IPR.”
ICK’s members, which include many innovative startups, had an opportunity to hear and raise questions about the types of IPR protections they can, and should, take advantage of and how they work—such as trademarks, design rights, copyright, patents, trade secrets, and geographical indications.
Darsej Rizaj, a CEO for Digital School, shared his company’s inspiring experience of how the company grew in the international market by protecting its IPR, which he considers to be one of their most valuable investments. Today, Digital School is growing to over 500 locations internationally. “It doesn't matter where you live, if you dare to dream and have the guts to believe, you should accept the risks and give it a go,” said Darsej. Such stories drive home how important it is that new businesses with bright ideas learn how to protect those innovations here in Kosovo and abroad right at the start of their investment.
Events like these roundtables, co-organized between USAID and ICK, are crucial, as they help Kosovo’s businesses learn, take full advantage of opportunities, and benefit from the commercial justice systems already in place.
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