Washington, DC and Bangkok, Thailand. IIPI teamed with its Advisory Board member Jacques Michel, the Kenan Institute, Asia and Chulalongkom University to produce a comprehensive report of the patent offices, their technological capacity and administration efficiency in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). While most ASEAN members have intellectual property (IP) laws, the degree to which those laws are used and implemented is often seen as insufficient. An efficient patent administration is imperative in order to ensure that a patent right is valid and that patent rights have the capacity to instigate investment. The goal of this report is to investigate the current capacity of ASEAN countries’ patent offices to achieve these goals and to provide recommendations on how to improve their systems.
The ASEAN countries are by no means homogenous in their IP capacity; the least-developed countries have no IP laws to speak of while Singapore has a fairly sophisticated patent system, using outside examination capacities from other patent offices. The report recommends some short-term interventions (including patent office work-flow, policy issues and IP training) and long-term solutions (including inter-ASEAN cooperation, adoption of a certification process and creation of a regional patent office). With stronger IP systems in place, ASEAN will benefit from the stronger economies of its member states.
For more information on this report, please contact Molly Torsen via email at mtorsen@iipi.org.