Intellectual Property Week 2021

‘Paving the path to growth and development through the protection of Intellectual Property Rights’ SUPPORTING THE MEN ANDWOMEN OF SMEs I T IS a great pleasure to address this message to our friends in Jamaica on the occasion of World Intellectual Property Day. Jamaica is a wellspring of talent and creativity. Jamaicans are known for their natural ability to innovate and create, and for breaking the mould and thinking out of the box. The home of ska, rocksteady, dancehall, and of course, reggae. Jamaican musicians continue to enthrall music lovers across the globe, from Bob Marley to Jimmy Cliff, and Shaggy to Buju Banton and emerging artistes like Jane Macgizmo, and Sevana. Today we celebrate SMEs, which collectively make up 90 per cent of all companies in the world, employ 70 per cent of workers globally, and represent half the world’s economy. They are often run by someone you know someone down the road, a friend from school, a relative you grew up with, your siblings, your parents. In Jamaica, SMEs, including MSMEs, play a major role in the national economy and in job creation. They are at the heart of Jamaica’s economy. These companies are the producers, the creators, the entertainers, the entrepreneurs and the cultural legends that make up the very fabric of economic and social life in Jamaica. Strong Jamaican brands like Blue Mountain coffee, Jamaican castor oil and Jamaican jerk sauces, which reflect Jamaica’s deep culinary heritage, all started as small or micro enterprises and are now thriving, thanks to their use of IP. Yet, many SMEs still lack knowledge about how IP can help them translate their ideas into products, and how IP can be a powerful tool for them to compete and grow. A recent study shows that SMEs in Europe that own IP rights like trademarks, patents and designs have close to 70 per cent more revenue per employee than those that haven’t yet used IP. But only nine per cent of SMEs in Europe have actually registered their IP rights. I suspect the situation in similar in other parts of the world. That is why this year, the focus of World Intellectual Property Day is timely and relevant: ‘IP and SMEs Taking your ideas to market’. We need to work with SMEs to enable them to use IP to support their business goals. By dedicating World Intellectual Property Day this year to SMEs, we show our support to the men and women who keep our economies afloat, whether it is through raising their awareness of IP by talking about it in a business friendly way, designing programmes to enable them to better navigate the process of IP registration and protection, creating tools that allow them to be better at IP management and strategy, or helping them to build skills and capabilities in using IP to grow their businesses. Whatever help we can render to our SMEs, is help that we render to the bedrock of your economy, and the backbone of the global economy. That is why the sterling work of the Jamaican Intellectual Property Office (JIPO) is so important, especially during these uncertain times. I applaud the achievements of the JIPO in making the IP message accessible through online platforms, and in increasing IP awareness, especially among Jamaica’s SME community. Keep up the good work! On this World Intellectual Property Day, let us celebrate SMEs and continue working together to help them use IP as a tool to grow, so they can take their ideas to market. Happy World Intellectual Property Day. DAREN TANG Director General, World Intellectual Property Organization CONGRATS ON ANOTHERWEEK OF CELEBRATIONS O N BEHALF of the directors of the JIPO Advisory Board, I join in congratulating JIPO on the staging of its annual Intellectual Property Week celebrations. JIPO has made it its duty, every April, for a week, to celebrate World Intellectual Property Day. This is to assist all Jamaicans to learn about the role that intellectual property (IP) rights play in encouraging innovation and creativity. The sterling work of JIPO and its mission “to establish and administer a modern and effective intellectual property system, which will act as a catalyst for international competitiveness, facilitating economic growth and national development”– the importance of it to national development often goes unheralded. When juxtaposed against the prolific and widely acknowledged creative genius of Jamaicans, it is not hard to recognise and appreciate that JIPO’s mission is a critical part of our industry’s ecosystem if we are to benefit economically from our creative output. If we needed any reminder, we could take the words of Mark Getty, chairman of Getty Images, the most successful picture agency in the world, that “intellectual property is the oil of the 21st century”. Getty pointed out that if we look at the richest men a hundred years ago, we will realise that they all made their money extracting natural resources or moving them around. But most, if not all of today’s wealth has been made from the use of IP. I am particularly pleased that the theme of this year’s celebrations is ‘IP and MSMEs: Taking your ideas to market’. Pleased because I am of the considered view that our micro, small and medium-sized businesses have not taken the requisite time and have not made enough effort to get their house in order, to maximise the possible returns from the ownership of their IP. Since landownership is better understood and appreciated by most, it provides a good parallel in convincing creatives to pay attention to their IP rights, and to view IP violation as trespass, in the same way one’s right to land is through legal ownership, and if another trespasses, he may face legal consequences. Even though you do not take anything away from the landowner when you trespass, most people understand and respect the laws that make it illegal. In the same way, the real crime in IP violation is the expropriation of the creator’s right to control the creation. Therefore, establish your ownership and then protect it. Let me add that overprotecting IP is as harmful as under-protecting it. Noted legal luminary Alex Kozinski outlined that “creativity is impossible without a rich public domain. Nothing today, likely nothing since we tamed fire, is genuinely new. Culture, like science and technology, grows by accretion, each new inventor building on the work of those who came before. Overprotecting stifles the very creative force it’s supposed to nurture”. As chairman, I once again congratulate the organisation on pulling together yet another exciting Intellectual Property Week, notwithstanding the challenges occasioned by the ongoing pandemic. As many of us have come to realise, the pandemic has forced us to pivot to better and more creative ways of doing things. The virtual staging of IP Week is one such. I wish success for the week of activities ahead. MRS. DEBBYANN BROWNSALMON Chairman, Advisory Board, JIPO V