Prof. Hidetoshi Nishimura, Executive Director of ERIA, was invited to the Conference on IP Statistics for Decision Makers 2014 co-organized by Japan Patent Office (JPO) and Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on November 17-18,2014 in Tokyo, Japan. It was opened by Mr. Hitoshi Ito, Commissioner of JPO and Mr. Rintaro Tamaki, Deputy Secretary-General of OECD.

Prof. Nishimura made a keynote speech on "ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) and Intellectual Property Rights?(IPR)" on the second day of the Conference. Firstly, he introduced ASEAN's efforts for developing their IPR system along with AEC, emphasizing that IPR is one of the core elements of AEC. He also explained on what ERIA has been doing for IPR system in ASEAN. ASEAN leaders requested ERIA to complete Mid-Term Review (MTR) of AEC Blueprint in 2012. In that process, ERIA reviewed the achievements of IPR issues and provided some recommendations to improve IPR environment of ASEAN.

ERIA also pointed out what to be improved, such as promoting local innovation or tackling piracy problem, in our MTR report. Prof. Nishimura showed the data of the residential share of patent applications and the piracy rates. For ASEAN, and emphasized that domestic inventions should be encouraged and public awareness of IPR should be improved.

Utilization of IPR is also an important element. Prof. Nishimura introduced ERIA organized ERIA-Myanmar IPR Symposium on IPR for SME Development" in cooperation with Myanmar Government and JPO in September 2014 in Nay Pyi Taw. Also, ERIA conducted a project "IPR Policy for Investment Promotion in ASEAN". In this project, ERIA identified the key IPR issues to promote foreign direct investment.

In concluding, Prof. Nishimura gave his view on what ASEAN should do beyond 2015, saying that "IPR must be very important element for robust productivity growth beyond 2015".