ASEAN’s long awaited IPR action plan 2016-25 is now in operation. It is an ambitious plan with a long timeframe. It contains many projects under its 19 Initiatives. Most have champion countries to drive them forwards. Many relate to improvement of IP services delivery (especially through capacity building and better IT adoption), some cover harmonization of registration systems, some are about joining more international IP treaties and yet more cover greater regional IP cooperation.
There are a number of projects to develop innovation through
patent infrastructure support to researchers and universities, such as improved
IP office and national science & technology R&D
Institutes, and University cooperation. Hopefully this will help local patent
filings grow from ASEAN member states. More could perhaps be done to support private sector patenting.
Initiative 12, a Regional Action Plan on IPR Enforcement is
of interest. This includes capturing data on enforcement cases, best practises
and national guidelines for criminal and civil cases, improved linkages between
national IP offices and the judiciary in members. This is the first time the regional group has begun to focus on enforcement. Much of the IP enforcement weaknesses are a subset of general legal system weaknesses, so lets see how this initiative comes together.
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