BANGKOK--12 Jan--สถาบันคีนันแห่งเอเซีย
A new report on patent and trademark processes in Southeast Asia provides details on advances in the registration of intellectual property and recommendations for further development.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office and the Kenan Institute Asia K.I.Asia’s “Comparative Assessment Study of Patent and Trademark Offices in Southeast Asia” at a half-day event at the Intercontinental Hotel. USPTO Commissioner for Patents Robert Stoll and K.I.Asia President Paul Wedel opened the event.
“The efficient registration and protection of intellectual property is a critical need in the region as countries seek to attract foreign investment, and, even more importantly, motivate and reward domestic innovation,” Mr. Wedel said. He said such innovation is particularly important for countries seeking to move up the value-added ladder to provide more creative, satisfying and well-paid jobs for local workers and business opportunities for entrepreneurs.
Participants included representatives from regional policy and research institutes, law firms and IP offices, and also high-ranking officials from the ASEAN Working Group on Intellectual Property Cooperation and the ASEAN Secretariat.
K.I.Asia, in collaboration with Chulalongkorn University’s Intellectual Property Institute and the law firm of Tilleke & Gibbins International Ltd., has updated and expanded its 2007 report with funding from the USPTO. The study focuses on the processes of patent and trademark registration in IP offices in Southeast Asia, and assesses each office’s operational and administrative capacity. The study includes the following ten countries: Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.
The overall goal of the study is to help strengthen patent and trademark registration processes in the region by providing comparable country-specific information in the following areas:
? Most recent information on patent and trademark office performance, such as size of the application backlog and the number of applications, grants, withdrawals and rejections
? Patent and trademark registration procedures, including the use of information technology and search tools, intellectual property rights (IPR) enforcement mechanisms, and recommendations for improvement
? Detailed profile on each country’s patent and trademark registration processes, including who actually examines the applications, whether or not there is protection against conflicts of interest, how long each step in the process takes, and who makes the key decisions in the process
? Recommendations on ways to improve both national and regional intellectual property (IP) processes
Key to the report’s findings was a list of common problems faced by patent and trademark offices region-wide, leading to lengthy pendency rates among various other issues. These problems included incomplete and/or poorly prepared applications; too few, unqualified and inexperienced examiners; insufficient ICT frameworks; and poor English language proficiencies.
In order to begin addressing these and other issues, K.I.Asia offered the following recommendations for regional IP offices and their international technical support partners:
? Training (and clear manuals) for both patent examiners and independent patent agents
? Additional patent and trademark examiners
? Improvements to ICT and IP databases and search tools
? IP networks with local universities, and increased examiner-applicant communication
? Financial autonomy to facilitate process improvements (aforementioned and beyond)
? Enhanced dialogue to foster ASEAN IP integration
The report will be useful to members of the public who desire to learn more about the processes and procedures for registering patents and trademarks in different ASEAN countries. Further, it is intended to serve as a launching pad for additional in-depth research to help pinpoint the needs of IP offices in order to increase not only their individual efficiencies, but also the overall strength of the region’s IP regime.
For more information:
Dr. Busakorn Chantasasawat, K.I.Asia, Business & Economic Development
Email:
[email protected]; Telephone: 02-229-3131