Steps to Protect Intellectual Property by Marlon Madden (Nation News)

 

 

The Caribbean Export Development Agency says it has been taking the necessary steps to address issues relating to the protection of intellectual property (IP) in the region.

Executive director Pamela Coke Hamilton said it has always been a concern, especially for people in the cultural industries, and they were seeking to address those concerns as they tried to get more people from different sectors taking advantage of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA).

“We have written it into our work programme. We recognize it, just like the finance issue, as one of the issues that bedevil the region,” she said.

“We actually started some sort of lobbying for the region to sign theMadrid Protocol because that would allow at least full recognition of our patents and intellectual property rights elsewhere.”

Coke Hamilton said they were also working with other agencies to host “IP value workshops”.

She was responding to questions during the agency’s recent London 2012, Break Point, CARIFORUM-EU Business Forum.

“So it is an issue but we have it in our work plan, in our competitiveness and innovation section, as one of the issues that needs to be addressed, and the issue of financing and working with banks to begin to recognize the importance,” she said, noting it was an expensive undertaking.

Asked if the European Union (EU) had provided the region with funds to address issues relating to intellectual property, Valeriano Diaz, head of the EU delegation in Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, said the region did not ask for that funding specifically.

“The region, after a long process of consultation, came back with a number of priorities, areas of activity to be funded. So you decided what needed to be funded,” he said.

“I don’t think there was anything on intellectual property. That is nothing that the region said needed to be funded. So there is nothing because the region did not identify it as a priority.

“It does not mean that in a future programme we would not provide funding, but it is not there now because you did not say there is,” explained Diaz.

He said the EU had provided the region with over €160 million (BDS$423.3 million) in funding.

Caribbean Export said their grant scheme currently “allows people to acquire the services of an IP attorney once they have been in business for a minimum of two years”. (MM)

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Date Posted

May 03 2012