Meeting between the Executive Director of the EUIPO and the IPOPHL Director General Rowel S. Barba

In the margins of the 4th edition of the International Intellectual Property (IP) Mediation Conference which took place in Alicante from 19 to 20 October 2023, a bilateral meeting was organised between Executive Director Mr João Negrão and Director General of the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL), Mr Rowel S. Barba.

The Executive Director took the opportunity to update Mr Barba on the EUIPO’s latest developments, expressing appreciation for the good working relations between the Offices over the years on both a bilateral and a regional level. He highlighted all the support the IPOPHL has provided to implement EU funded projects (IP Key SEA Phase I and II, ARISE+ IPR), as well as the commitment to continue working closely with the IPOPHL under the successor of ARISE+ IPR, which is going to be under the EU and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Sustainable Connectivity Package component 1.4 (SCOPE IPR) as of January 2024.

He mentioned the IPOPHL’s commitment to contribute to an enhanced bilateral technical cooperation, under which they managed to implement the EUIPN flagship tools (TMview, DesignView, TMclass), use the Harmonised Database of goods and services (HDB) and deploy two national experts to the EUIPO under the Seconded National Expert and Junior IP Employee Traineeship Programmes.

Mr Negrão and Mr Barba expressed their interest to continue strengthening the partnership in IP-related areas in the future and identify the areas that will address not only the needs of the staff and users, but also promote the IP system as a tool for fostering innovation and creativity.