NEW YORK – As
brand owners and trademark professionals face new opportunities and challenges
in the Asia-Pacific region and elsewhere, the International Trademark
Association (INTA) will be holding an educational conference in Sydney,
Australia, from October 11 to 12, to explore timely issues that extend beyond
those focused only on trademarks.
INTA’s 2018 Asia-Pacific
Conference: Looking Beyond Trademarks—Protecting and Leveraging Your Brands for
Growth is designed to help attendees stay ahead of the curve and will address a
broad range of topics that impact brand value in today’s market. Attendees will
include brand owners, in-house counsel, law firm practitioners, trademark
professionals, and government officials.
Among the timely topics are
establishing an online presence in China—home to the world’s largest online
retail market, balancing intellectual property rights and regulatory
restrictions, anti-counterfeiting, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and
enforcement issues such as ambush marketing and changes to the WHOIS domain
name database in light of recent data privacy regulations.
As part of INTA’s own CSR
efforts, the Association is asking attendees upon registration to make a
voluntary donation to Indigenous Community Volunteers, an Australian nonprofit
community development organization that provides opportunities for Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander people to develop human and community capacity.
“In the past year, INTA nearly doubled our
engagements with government officials in the region while advocating for the
development of strong brands and robust trademark enforcement,” said INTA CEO
Etienne Sanz de Acedo. “The Asia-Pacific Conference offers an unparalleled
opportunity to look at intellectual property and related issues through local,
regional, and global lenses, and to develop skills and knowledge about critical
topics that affect brands in today’s changing landscape.”
INTA’s Asia-Pacific Conference is
just one of its major upcoming events in the region. INTA’s 142nd Annual
Meeting—the world’s largest trademark event—will take place in Singapore, April
25‒29, 2020, at the Marina Bay Sands. This marks the second time INTA will be
bringing its Annual Meeting to Asia and the first time to the Southeast Asia
region.
INTA’s activities come at a time
of tremendous interest in the region from an economic growth perspective,
including the contribution of trademark-intensive industries.
An INTA-released impact study
entitled The Economic Contribution of Trademark-Intensive Industries in
Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand found that across
trademark-intensive industries within the five countries, direct contribution
to gross domestic product (GDP) varied between 17 percent and 50 percent,
indirect contribution to GDP ranged from 40 percent to 60 percent, and workers’
share of the workforce ranged from 13 percent to 29 percent of total
employment.