Philippines IP News
EU, Philippines to resume talks on partnership deal-Feb 2009
A high level EU Commission delegates will be arriving in Manila to continue negotiations for an agreement that will include trade and intellectual property issues.
The partnership and cooperation agreement (PCA) has to be concluded before the Philippines can participate in a free trade deal with European countries. The delegation will also meet other members of ASEAN to discuss Free Trade Agreement issues.
The European Commission is led by EU Director for Asia James Moran. The discussion is to continue from previous ones conducted in Brussels late last year. The PCA will cover a broad range of areas such as development cooperation, trade and investment facilitation, and common policies for protecting human rights. Also on topic will be the ways in which the Philippines would benefit from EU grants for overseas development aid. The agreement is also a precursor before a free trade pact between both countries.
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It is important for the Philippines to work out an agreement as the European Commission will go ahead and negotiate bilateral free trade deals with select members of ASEAN instead of waiting for all of the region’s members to conclude PCA talks. In this context, the Philippines would like to play a leading exemplary role. Protection of intellectual property has been a major issue here as copyright infringements, especially music and software has not been on the bright side for quite some time now. Another sticking point in the PCA is spurious human rights issues. Formal talks for the PCA will likely be concluded in two years, the same time it took Indonesia to complete such a deal.
It is time to Geographical Indicate products for better branding purposes
Adrian Cristobal Jr., Director General of the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines, has advised farmers and food producers to make use of Geographical Indicators (GI) to promote and protect their produces. A GI tag is a great marketing technique that can really make the difference for producers from a certain region. It not only differentiates a product, but also has touristic advantages. As farm products travel great distances, some all the way round the world, and when it has a GI name tagged to it, people will become more aware of its existence. The curious might even travel far to seek and learn more about its origins.
In this respect, he pointed out such produces like the Sarangani Golden Mango, Tatak Bulacan sweets and Vida Pampanga delicacies should be Geographically tagged. He also reminded the Local Government Units (LGU)to help propogate GI ideas among the farmers as they would know the intrinsic values of GI tagging better. As a prelude to a more aggressive take by the Phillipine IP Office, a Field Operations Units (FOU) was launched in 2008, with the hope that its presence will further spur more filings of intellectual properties like GI’s.
Sourced from the Business Mirror, May 25 2009
Geographical Indicators for the Philippines, finally?
Although Geographic Indications (GI) has not been made a gazette by the Philippines Intellectual Office, there are indications that it will eventually be enacted, just like many of the advance countries. As an agricultural and touristic country, with many diverse produces, the Philippines stand to gain if the rural sectors can better brand their products for the export markets. Together with the department of Agriculture and department of Tourism, the Philippines Intellectual Property Office has embarked on a mission to better educate the people on the benefits of putting a Geographical Indication on their produces. It is a new concept to the Philippinos, but already a well developed brand building exercise for advance economies.
However, it is not without problem if the concept is implemented because there are already plenty of goods being sold through out the country, especially in Manila, where geographical names are already being associated with the goods. If GI’s are strictly enforced, there will be many disputes among the traders as each will try to claim that their products belong to the original source. Certainly, there will be a need to establish a workable way to determine the authenticity of each product’s origin. Otherwise, it might be a nightmare for the courts as people begin to bring their cases to litigations. Arguments aside, a GI deployment will bring about the expansion of goods sold to far off places, as an indication mark will give it an exoticness that is not associated with ordinary products.
July 16, 2009.
This beer is served below zero degrees. It is no rocky affair though.
How do you like your beer to be served in a bottle at below zero degrees centigrade? For sure, the beer doesn’t look like solid ice when it is poured out of the bottle. It’s a new experience though. A new company from the Philippine by the name of Beer Below Zero Inc. (BBZ) said it has developed a technology that delivers beer at below zero degrees centigrade. It has retrofitted a freezer that does the trick and it wants to export the technology to other countries. Luigi C. Nuñez, president of BBZ said that they have already filed patents for the technology in the Philippines and Singapore, and is on the path of forming joint ventures in the Pacific Rim countries as an expansion exercise.
Nuñez said that theirs is a Philippines invention, and although they are promoting joint ventures overseas, there will not be a technology transfer as they will be handling the freezers themselves. However, they will not be promoting any brand of beers, just those brands that are available locally. Their business model is based on a small commission of not more than 10 pesos for each bottle chilled. According to Nuñez, there is a high demand for their chilled beer, but they are not able to cope with the demand for the freezers. Hopefully, they will be able to ram up the production of their freezers as soon as possible. In the meanwtime, interest has poured in from neighboring countries as far as China and India.
September 11, 2009. Sourced from Business Mirror.
Good figures but on closer look, the glaring weakness showed up
Here is a bit of good news for the Philippines. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) 2009 World IP Indicators reveals that of the 20 emerging countries studied, 'the patent office of Ukraine received the largest number of applications, followed by the patent offices of Indonesia, the Philippines and Chile”. The report was based on 2006 statistics. However, in a not so favorable light, it was also indicated that a large number of patent filings (reaching over 90%) in the Philippines was filed by non-citizens. This is a reality that not only happens in the Philippines, but also in other regions as well, with the exception of Japan, Korea and Taiwan. Around the region, patent filings normally come from the academic institutions as cost of taking up filings is considered prohibitive. Still, the situation is not that bad, and like the foreign colonization that these countries had endured a few decades ago, there will be a time when citizens will rise up to get independence from their masters. With the information age, the time to get independence (from an intellectual perspective) might be shortened.
November 19, 2009.