ASEAN concludes three-day workshop with US Trademark Office

Published: 13-Jan-12

PHNOM PENH (Cambodia Herald) - The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) concluded Friday a three-day workshop on trademark examination for two dozen officials from national trademark offices in the region, the US embassy said.

Organized by the ASEAN Secretariat and the embassy in cooperation with the Intellectual Property Department of the Cambodian Ministry of Commerce, the workshop allowed USPTO attorneys and trademark officials to "share experiences and strategies for quality trademark examination practice," a statement said.

The statement said the workshop focused on trademark examination issues such as the likelihood of confusion, distinctiveness, well-known marks, and non-traditional trademarks.

The embassy noted that the United States and ASEAN had recently embarked on five-year cooperative action plan.

"As we designed the plan last year, our ASEAN colleagues strongly requested that USPTO continue its regional training programs as part of our support to ASEAN’s Economic Community,” said David Carden, the Jakarta-based US Ambassador to ASEAN.

“We agree that intellectual property rights protection and enforcement of intellectual property law will be a great help to improving the investment climate and boosting economic development across the ASEAN region,” he said.

Kan Pharidh, the permanent Cambodian representative to the ASEAN Secretariat in Jakarta, said the workshop reflected the "positive push forward" for implementing the ASEAN-US cooperative program, encompassed in the ASEAN-US Plan of Action for 2011-2015 and joint statements by ASEAN and US leaders.

Cambodia, the current ASEAN chair, anticipates hosting other regional workshops related to intellectual property rights and in other areas that would contribute to the realization of an ASEAN Community by 2015, he said.
“The active participation of ASEAN officials in the workshop supported key ASEAN integration goals," Kan Pharidh said, adding that it also enhanced the exchange of knowledge of intellectual property rights among ASEAN governments envisioned in the ASEAN Economic Community Blueprint.

Among USTPO staff contributing to the workshop was Peter Fowler, the regional intellectual property attaché for Southeast Asia who also met with local enforcement and judicial authorities during his visit to Phnom Penh to discuss "current law enforcement activities and greater cooperation on effective enforcement strategies," the embassy said.