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ASEAN and EU to intensify co-operation in the field of intellectual property rights protection

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The European Union and ASEAN have made a significant step forward in their joint efforts to promote internationally accepted standards of intellectual property rights (IPR) in South-East Asia through an international symposium organised in Bangkok under the new European Commission-ASEAN Intellectual Property Rights Cooperation Programme (ECAP II).

The EC funded programme sets out is designed to foster trade, investment and technology transfer between Europe and ASEAN, as well as within ASEAN. The symposium, which is the first IPR-related event based in Asia under the new scheme programme, unites around 50 intellectual property specialists from the ASEAN and EU member states.

For two days, Bangkok is the meeting point for some of South-East Asia's and Europe's leading experts on intellectual property rights. University professors, intellectual property judges, patent and trade mark attorneys, as well as high-ranking representatives of European and ASEAN institutions and offices have met in the Thai capital to discuss strategies to make the best use of networking between courts and educational institutions in intellectual property in the area. Amongst the institutions represented are the European Commission, the ASEAN Intellectual Property Association, the Department of Intellectual Property of Thailand, the IP offices of the other ASEAN member states, the European Patent Office and the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM) which is responsible for the EU's trade marks and designs system.

“The launch of the WTO Doha Development Round reinforced the importance of developing countries participation in the global trade arena. The involvement of the European Commission in regional co-operation programmes such as ECAP II highlights the importance the Commission places on helping developing countries do just that,” says Ambassador-Head of the Delegation of the European Commission Klauspeter Schmallenbach.

“By participating in ECAP II ASEAN countries can draw on European expertise in how to protect and enforce intellectual property rights in compliance with the WTO agreement on Trade-related aspects of Intellectual Property Rights. Such rights form one of the basic pillars upon which business and investor confidence are based. They are an essential tool for any country’s economic development and through their implementation may help boost European investment in the region back to pre-crisis levels.”

The symposium marks the start of programme activities in Asia under ECAP II scheme , which is supported by the European Commission and implemented by the European Patent Office and the OHIM. Building on the success of the first ECAP programme, which was launched in 1993 and ended in 1997, the present programme mainly focuses on developing regional structures and policies in intellectual property (IP), the legal framework of IP protection, the modernisation of IP offices and the enforcement system for IP rights in conformity with the WTO’s agreement on Trade-related aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs). The programme is designed to run over a period of five years and is endowed with a budget of euro EUR 5m (191 million baht). To help facilitate the programme, a local co-ordination office has been officially opened by Thailand's Deputy Minister of Commerce, Newin Chidchob, and Ambassador Klauspeter Schmallenbach, Head of the EC Delegation in Thailand. The office is located in the premises of the Thailand's Department of Intellectual Property.

ECAP II specifically responds to the needs of the ASEAN countries in their bid to participate in a rapidly expanding global market in which the use and protection of intellectual property rights plays a key role. At global level, nearly 700,000 new inventions from all over the world are disclosed each year in patent applications, which in their turn can be the subject of multiple subsequent filings. Accordingly, global demand for patent rights rose from 2.7m in 1994 to more than 7m in 1999. This development is also reflected in growing patenting activity in the ASEAN states and an increasing tendency on the part of ASEAN companies to expand their patent strategies to the European market: "In the past five years, companies from ASEAN have increased their patent activities in Europe significantly. Their number has risen from 15 in 1996 to 120 in 2000. ECAP II is particularly suited to encourage this development and to facilitate the way for ASEAN companies to enter the European market," says Dr Ingo Kober, President of the European Patent Office.

Similar developments have been observed in the field of trade marks. To meet the needs of companies wishing to export their goods or provide services within Europe, a relatively new instrument offering exclusive regional trade mark rights has been created: the Community trade mark (CTM). “Companies from South-East Asia whose export strategies lie in the European market are increasingly taking advantage of the benefits and protection that the CTM option provides, with almost 1,000 applications having been filed,” according to Dr Alberto Casado Cervino, Vice-President for Technical and Administrative Affairs of OHIM.

The importance of the ECAP II project is also highlighted by the fact that Asia accounts for 21% of the European Union's external exports, making it the EU's third-largest trading partner. The main objective of EU relations with Asia is to strengthen the two-way flow of trade and investment by improving market access and investment conditions on both sides. In this context, the development of a modern intellectual property rights protection system is of central importance for the establishment of permanently favourable conditions for trade and investment between the EU and ASEAN.

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