ASEAN's designs on Hague

The ASEAN secretariat office based in Jakarta has a number of IP initiatives ongoing as part of its journey towards the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC - see here) in 2015. It was initially suggested that the 10 ASEAN states should work on building a central designs filing office. However ASEAN changed policy and now proposes to have its members joins the Hague Convention. 

 
The Hague System for the International Registration of Industrial Designs involves a single central application via WIPO which can designate signatory member states of the Hague Agreement. The international registration has the same effect in each country as a national application unless protection is refused by the national office of that country when it examines the design. The main users are European companies, since US, China and Japan are not members.

 
ASEAN hopes to have 7 members join by 2015 although it does not specify which. Singapore is already a member. IP Komodo speculates that some of the least developed countries may not join, or perhaps Indonesia as the least developed of the larger markets.