IP AUSTRALIA Branding and innovation
In its quest for boosting innovation in Australia, the Raising the Bar bill has not leſt trademarks behind. Far from it, the bill has been written with the importance of branding to innovation in mind. “I think the two go hand-in-hand,” says Noonan. “Innovation without a brand is just a fragile advantage and a brand without innovation is just a fashion trend.”
Te new bill makes improvements to Australia’s trademark enforcement mechanisms, which should help brand owners. A problem that brand owners have oſten faced in Australia is proving that a seller of counterfeit goods is aware that the goods being sold are fake and infringe trademark rights.
“The Raising the Bar bill tackles this by introducing some new offences for trademark infringement with a lower mental requirement in the offence,” says Noonan. “This will make it easier for a trademark owner who finds infringing goods on sale to prosecute the retailer.”
Further afield, Australia has been working with countries from South East Asia and others in its region on the internal trademark treaty the
Madrid Protocol. Australia is supportive of its neighbours efforts to sign up to the protocol so that exporters can have a simple process for registering and maintaining their trademarks in the markets that they export to.
Noonan says: “With the countries in our region oſten being Australian exporters' priority, we have worked with the World Intellectual Property
Organization to host seminars for countries in the region on how to implement the Madrid Protocol and encouraging them to sign up.”
But IP professionals in the region have resisted this, says Noonan. He explains: “Sometimes we find the IP profession in all countries can be concerned about loss of income if trademark registration is made too easy through introducing a reform such as the protocol, but we think in an era of
increasing electronic transactions change is coming and the profession should get on board. Countries can’t afford to be uncompetitive in this or any other area and we think the profession should focus their efforts on adding value by, for instance, being able to advise clients about commercialisation strategies.”
Australia has signalled its intent with the Raising the Bar bill. It wants to create an environment in which businesses and inventors, both national and foreign, can thrive, and a modern IP system is integral to that. But how many of these changes will work in practice still needs to be figured out, and Noonan is keen to make sure this happens as smoothly and as quickly as possible. n
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World Intellectual Property Review March/April 2012
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