The ITSO Franchise started in 2010 through a cooperation Agreement with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It was formally launched on March 22, 2012 at the Manila Peninsula Hotel in Makati City.

In 2010, the IPOPHL launched a project to establish Innovation and Technology Support Offices (ITSO) or "Patent Libraries" within universities and higher education institutions. The objective was to strengthen local institutional capacity to access patent information for use in research, education, idea generation and general business development. At the same time, the ITSOs were envisioned to be the patent service providers in their local communities, conducting not only patent searches but also patent drafting, prosecution representation, advisory, training and over-all IP management.

The progressive economies of the world are able to capitalize on the patent system because their scientists, researchers and R&D practitioners in the academe and industries were able to access latest scientific and technological information from the world patent databases and use the same to generate new and useful knowledge to create innovative and competitive products and services. Further, they are able to seek patent protection for the new knowledge, products and services. This way, the patent system has come to play an indispensable role in the economic development of the more advanced countries.

In most developing countries, however, the patent system only serves to protect predominantly foreign technology embodied in products and services marketed and sold in the country. There is hardly any patent activity involving resident inventors, researchers and industry. In the Philippines for example, scientists and researchers are generally unaware of the rich source of information found in the world patent databases. Lacking the necessary skills to conduct patent search and understand patent documents, their researches are frequently done without the benefit of knowing prior existing inventions or related scientific findings contained in patent documents. Review of related literature conducted by researchers does not cover patent literature. Likewise, industries rarely seek competitive and technological information from patent databases.

It is for this reason that IPOPHL embarked on the project of establishing the ITSO which has expanded to include non-government and government instrumentalities that have become interested in using patent information in realizing their mandates. To date, there are 77 ITSOs all over the Philippines located comprising of academic institutions (72), research and development institutions (3), and support institutions (2).

ITSO 2.0 program is the re-engineered version of the old ITSO program,  designed to revitalize the ITSO network further to cope with the pressing demands of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). The new ITSO 2.0 aims to support creativity and cause a robust innovation ecosystem in the country through accessing and appropriating the patent system tools, thus helping the Philippines secure a globally competitive economy through solution value research and innovation initiatives by our universities and research institutes that yield high-value technology solutions.

Under this new program, ITSOs are clustered accordingly based on the set parameters. The clustering will mainly identify the ITSOs who have developed specific competencies or expertise over time and, likewise, determine who has the manpower to dispense such expertise.

• At the onset of membership, IPOPHL provides a series of extensive training workshops to ITSOs for the mandatory basic courses:
  • Foundation Course on Intellectual Property
  • Patent Search
  • Patent Drafting
• IPOPHL also freely provides high-level training workshops on IP Policy Development and Review, IP Curriculum Development, and IP Commercialization
• The ITSOs are likewise eligible to take various advanced courses provided by partner institutions such as the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and Japan Patent Office (JPO). ITSOs may take the WIPO Distance Learning program under scholarship grants, and they are the priority nominees to various international learning opportunities offered by partner agencies.