AIPPI Congress: IP law harmonisation, NFTs, and globalisation
As the association celebrates its 125-year anniversary in San Francisco, leading IP figures explore the key issues dominating the sector, as Sarah Speight reports.
The International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property (AIPPI) welcomed delegates to its World Congress for the first time in two years on Saturday, September 10, in San Francisco.
The four-day conference, held in the association’s 125th year, kicked off with an opening ceremony and welcome reception at the Marriott Marquis Hotel.
Harmonisation of IP laws
President of the AIPPI, Luiz Henrique do Amaral, managing partner at Dannemann, Siemsen, Bigler & Ipanema Moreira gave a welcome address, emphasising the association’s role in promoting a greater harmonisation of IP laws worldwide.
He said: “We are back and AIPPI is back stronger than ever”, while acknowledging “sister” organisations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and World Trade Congress (WTC) which were present at the Congress.
The association “continues to be relevant and important in the development of intellectual property and the harmonisation of international law”, said Do Amaral, and pledged that the AIPPI will continue to do “what the founders of our association always thought would be possible”.
“The visionaries that were the founding fathers of our association—back in 1897 during the industrial revolution—decided in Brussels, after working on the design and shape of the Paris Convention, that there was a need for an association that would promote harmonisation and internationalisation even further…” he said. “They were so smart in shaping an organisation whose theme would still be alive and relevant in all the years to come.”
The case for NFTs
He added: “I think we are all very fortunate to be able to be here to be face to face interacting back in our networking, and I am sure that this Congress will show that AIPPI will continue to be relevant throughout the years.”
The opening ceremonies also addressed the increasing importance of NFTs, amid increasing litigation in this space and questions over whether rules, including Rogers and nominative fair use, need to evolve.
Soy Fira, Colombia’s first female crypto artist, gave a demonstration of her artwork using an iPad and writing across her illustration, “IP matters”.
She argued the case for NFTs in a passionate explanation of how it has changed her life as an artist, adding that “art reflects what happens in society” and finishing with the observation that “art plus blockchain equals NFTs”.
Keynote speaker Judge Marsha Berzon, senior judge for the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, gave her recollections of various cases she has worked on since joining the court in 2000.
Berzon’s speech was peppered with a few of the 30 precedential cases she has been involved in at the court, including the landmark Skidmore v Led Zeppelin (2020) copyright case concerning the song “Stairway to Heaven”.
She described her experience as a “steep learning curve”m explaining how she and her fellow judges took regular deep-dives into complex areas of IP such as standard essential patents and the Madrid Protocol.
Ebbs and flows of globalisation
Patrick Coyne, president of AIPPI-US and partner at Finnegan, discussed the notion of the demise of globalisation, entreating delegates that if they’ve read about it in the press, “don’t believe a word of it”.
“You're seeing blips—globalisation is still at least three times more than it was in the 1920s and ‘30s. And it's not going to go back; you're going to have ebbs and flows…but the bottom line is this system has ensured a tremendous amount of world peace and a fantastic improvement in human health and condition in the last 75 years.”
These advances, he explained, were largely due to IP.
Coyne concluded with a challenge for the IP community. “Despite whatever trade wars are going on, we need to continue the good work that we are doing to try to improve our economic systems. Why? Because it'll help you. It'll help your clients. It'll help patent owners. It'll help users of the patent system and in that way, it will help everyone.”
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