Rio de Janeiro – This Tuesday (25th), the vice director of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Brazil, Beatriz Amorim-Borher, confirmed the possibility of integration in intellectual property rights between the Arab League and the countries that compose the recently-created Regional South American Industrial Property Cooperation System (Prosur).
Beatriz is attending the 2nd Interregional Forum for Heads of Industrial Property Offices in Arab and South American Countries, which opened today in Rio, promoted by the Wipo and Brazil’s National Industrial Property Institute (Inpi). The forum, which ends on Thursday (27th), counts on delegates from eight out of nine Prosur member countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname and Uruguay.
“The possibility [for integration] is there,” said Beatriz. She explained that one of the topics under discussion at the event is to improve the quality of patents and brands analysis, as well as infrastructure and collaborative analysis. “Prosur’s experience will be laid out to the Arab countries,” said Beatriz. To her, the inclusion of Arab countries will take some time, but the Prosur experience will provide an inspiration for boosting interregional cooperation in patents and brands analysis.
According to the Inpi press office, the forum is meant to increase technical cooperation and integration of databases among the countries involved in the system. A pilot project should be released this year for bilateral cooperation in patent analysis. “Many countries are interested in learning how the Inpi approaches intellectual property within the context of innovation-oriented policies, which has been done successfully in Brazil in many cases, both by the government and the industry,” said Beatriz.
The forum is a development of the first meeting of intellectual property offices in South American and Arab League countries, held in October 2009 in Lebanon.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
