The Philippines IP office interview: Championing IP in ASEAN

“Given ASEAN’s diverse legal regimes and practices, and the differences in the IP development of each member state, negotiating as a bloc is a gargantuan effort,” says Josephine Santiago, director general of the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL).

Santiago is discussing the challenges of the ten ASEAN member states in achieving consensus during free trade negotiations with third countries. In a major proposed trade deal, the Philippines and the nine other ASEAN countries—Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam—are negotiating the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership with six Asia-Pacific nations: Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand.

The Philippines, just one member of the ASEAN bloc, has an ethnically and culturally diverse population of more than 100 million inhabitants, so “gargantuan” is probably not an overstatement from Santiago.