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At-a-glance: Intellectual Property Philippines IPO Building, 351 Sen Gil Puyat Ave, Makati City, Philippines 1200 Tel: +632 752 5450 to 65, Fax: +632 897 1724 Email: mail@ipophil.gov.ph or dittb@ipophil.gov.ph Website: www.ipophil.gov.ph The P... [more]

The Philippines became the 85th nation to accede to the Madrid Protocol on July 25 2012, enabling trade mark holders and applicants to file trade mark applications in different countries through the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL). The Philippines joins fellow Asian members China, Japan, Korea and Singapore in the protocol, all of whom are major trading partners. With the advent of Madrid, trade mark applications are expected to increase significantly and likely to outnumber those of its neighbours Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, who have yet to join.

In 2012 IPOPHL successfully implemented the Industrial Property Automation System (IPAS), a fully automated system to process utility model, industrial design, patent and trade mark applications. IPAS aims to deliver a more efficient registration service by bringing the Philippine system in line with more mature IP regimes. This was one of many groundbreaking projects successfully concluded in the continuation of modernising the Philippine IP system.

The country's patent system is still very much a work in progress, with low volumes dominated by foreign applicants. In an effort to maximise resources from other IP offices from across the globe the IPOPHL entered into patent prosecution highway (PPH) agreements with the Japanese Patent Office and the USPTO.

As an acknowledgement of the country's progress in fighting counterfeiters, at last the Philippines has been removed from the United States Trade Representative (USTR) 2012 Special 301 Notorious Markets Report, in which the Philippines has appeared for the past six years. However, the Philippines still remains on the Watch List of the Report, though the USTR states it is encouraged by the significant decline in the number of unauthorised camcorder incidents in cinemas following the Anti-Camcording Act 2010.

To avoid complacency, the Philippine government revised the Copyright Law to further fight its reputation as one of Asia's piracy capitals. This February, amendments to the Copyright Act came into effect, expanding the scope of infringement to include liability for contributory infringement as well as prohibiting circumvention of technological measures and rights management information.