Protect your value, protect your rights!

JIPO hosts historic sport and intellectual property seminar

André Lowe, Senior Staff Reporter

As the local sporting industry continues to experience growth, the Jamaica Intellectual Property Office (JIPO) is doing its part in ensuring the protection of sporting rights and intellectual property (IP), with the staging of their 'Sport and Intellectual Property' seminar at the Knutsford Court Hotel yesterday.

The two-day seminar, which was endorsed by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) - that for the first time was organising an IP seminar on sports and co-sponsored by law firm Gordon McGrath - pulled out a number of sporting administrators, sponsors, members of the legal fraternity and other industry insiders.

It was staged with the hope of highlighting the role and opportunities of intellectual property in the local sporting industry.

Speaking during the opening ceremony of the function that continues today, Minister of Youth, Culture and Sport, Olivia 'Babsy' Grange, lauded the initiative of JIPO and underlined the importance of a greater appreciation for the benefits of intellectual property.

"I commend JIPO for seeing it fit to stage this seminar and for having the foresight," said Grange. "It is about the refashioning of our approach to our natural abilities and of the traditional ways in which we have tended to see them.

"We have come to realise that sport serves us as employment, as ways of earning a living; it propels us to local and international fame and, of course fortune," she added.

"Jamaica has a strong and enviable sporting tradition," she noted. "This is an occasion for us to learn more about sports and the forms of our engagement with it as a part of our intellectual property, and to exam more fully the role of those rights within the sporting industry."

WIPO's deputy director general, Geoffrey Onyeama, was full of praise for the country's efforts in engaging discussion on intellectual property and sport, and also made note of the historic nature of the event.

"This is actually the first meeting that WIPO has organised around IP and sports so it's a very new area, and I think it's typical of the dynamism of Jamaica in so many different fields, as the first country to host such a meeting," Onyeama said.

important matter

He added: "A lot of people in the developing world feel that intellectual property is not necessarily for us and the holders of most intellectual property rights are actually in the industrialised countries, so this is really an important achievement for Jamaica to be ahead of the pack in engaging on this very important subject matter."

JIPO's executive director, Carol Simpson, underscored the importance of the seminar.

"The aim of each of our sessions has been to sensitise rights owners of intellectual property rights on how to benefit from the proper protection and management of their creative exploits in their particular area of creativity," Simpson pointed out.

"We are keen for our athletes; both current and upcoming professionals, to be aware of how intellectual property may assist them in earning both during active careers and after retirement on and off the field. Also with our sports administrators, coaches, managers, business interests and legal practitioners."

Also speaking at the conference were PUMA's senior head, global sports marketing and sports law, Christian Maximilian Voigt, WIPO's head of Caribbean Unit, Paul Regis, LIME's chief marketing officer, Chris Dehring, attorney Delano Franklyn, West Indies Players Association president, Dinanath Ramnarine, and publicist Carole Beckford.

The seminar continues today at 9 a.m. with another two sessions.